


Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes (season 1)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog, supernatural s01 e02, supernatural s01e01, supernatural s01e03, watching notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 08:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 58,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16850398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. 1x01

I swear this is one of the few episodes I’ll start with an anecdote.

Most shows and stuff you don’t really have a story on how you started watching them. You were bored, it was raining, there were a few hours to kill…

Supernatural came to me with a sort of narrative significance you don’t often get a heads up for about what will be important in your life. It was 2008, I’d just moved across the country for university, and I had lucked out and was living in the same town as two internet friends who promptly adopted me. They also happened to have an ongoing fight. The  _most_  ongoing fight that can never be won…  _Sam or Dean_?

I had no idea what I was getting into when, barely 3 encounters into our new IRL friendship thing, I found myself ushered into the lounge and presented with grim faces and friends holding a box of DVDs. “Lizzy, you have to decide for us,” they said. “Sam or Dean.”

“Who or who?”

(they weren’t to know about Cas - we only had season 1 and 2 at our disposal at that point. :P)

And so one of the coolest relationships of my life (don’t tell them I said that) ended up forming around marathoning eventually 3 seasons of Supernatural together…

* * *

After spending all of season 10 grumpily asking, “Where’s Cas?” this episode is actually one of the easiest to fix off-screen within the first minute of the show completely in canon: 

> DEAN:  
>  Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You’ve got faith. That’s — hey, good for you. I’m sure it makes things easier. I’ll tell you who else had faith like that — Mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me. 

(2x13) Bam, it’s already Destiel and Sam is still wearing a diaper.

* * *

I wonder if this couple in the picture is meant to include Henry:

Or, you know, would be meant to if you asked anyone now. :P Did we ever find out anything about the mysterious grandmother? She is the ultimate invisible female character. Today is now a day of tribute towards her. Bless you Grammy Winchester (I mean no one’s going to tell me Dean n Sam WOULDN’T call her that SINCE SHE DOESN’T FUCKING EXIST).

May you randomly show up 100 years old and kicking butt in season 11 and survive the season and move into the bunker and fill it with doilies and embroidered cushions for the chairs. Probably get that cat Cas always wanted. You will be un-fridgeable.

* * *

Dean had a giant sock monkey kill me now.

* * *

To be honest I was only joking about playing this game of spot-the-angel but I am getting  _deeply uncomfortable_  vibes about John’s robe in this scene looking like the robe Cas was wearing in 10x01. I regret everything.

* * *

Do you know what I like about this show? We still know basically  _fuck all_  about Dean between the last canon reference to Sam leaving for Stanford and him rolling into town to raid Sam’s fridge for beer.

Like I mean there’s some odd references here and there in the early seasons (I think Cassie was from the missing time?) but it’s mostly a total blank canvas. We know where Sam was and who he was with but Dean was living the hunter life the whole time.

Or, as fan fic would tell me, ditching his responsibilities and hooking up with countless dudes any time John let him out of his sight for more than five minutes.

* * *

Meanwhile: the discussion about the easel in Sam n Jess’s apartment makes me think that if Jess was the artist there is  ~~probably~~  definitely a hilariously awkward artistic nude of Sam somewhere in the house at this point. He must be secretly glad it went up in flames, and hates himself forever for thinking that.

* * *

Sam gets in the first “I’m fine” of the show when reassuring Jess about leaving. Nice start to the trend. He seems mostly oblivious that having just heard a message that says “I can never go home” that the narrative and their scenery/environment is constructed entirely around him (perhaps because of living in Jess’s personal-touch apartment - we know Sam’s preference for  _not_  decorating a room now)… If he paid attention he would know it was foreshadowing for the fact he was about to step out on the road and never come back.

Hell, the looming interview  _should_  have been his warning, but I suppose until Dean showed up he was letting himself believe he could get away with it and become narratively sedentary. He really ought to have taken it as an omen that THAT CLOSE to the interview Dean would appear and convince him to step out for five minutes.

* * *

I am endlessly amused (like going on 7 years worth of amusement) by Sam loudly yelling about credit card fraud probably within hearing range of people in that gas station.

… I’ve been in a dodgy backroads gas station shop like that and I swear the people who own places like that really go all out to decorate them to look like the first stop to a horror movie setting. I was honestly too scared to drink the Mountain Dew we bought because I thought it might be the first step towards being cursed or infected with the zombie plague or something. I thought places like that only existed in horror movies about unwary travellers. 

I’m just imagining the AU where Cas ended up working in one of  _those_  instead of his nice clean Gas n Sip. 9x06 would have been very different.

ALTHOUGH imagine it was visually similar to the gas station in 4x01. HOLY MISSED OPPORTUNITY BATMAN.

*sulks*

* * *

Oh lordy, Dean saying how healthy it is that Sam intends to never ever tell Jess what it is they do, even while admitting he wants that for the long-term. Of course he’s planning on actually retiring and becoming a lawyer still at this point, but hey, it’s the root of a long theme with Sam of all the all-or-nothing in-or-out mentality. 

* * *

Do you ever wonder about how John’s journal was almost completely full up but he had like one blank page at the end where he could scribble those co-ordinates for Dean or whatever those numbers ended up being *can’t remember* … It makes me wonder if the journal being almost full up was supposed to be a sign that it was time for them to continue on by literally actually writing stuff down. Which they never ever do. Never mind all the useful information they constantly ditch. Like all the  _other_  stuff that was in that room aside from the journal. That’s another pattern that starts here.

* * *

You know people speculate that it’s the Purple Dog Shirt in this episode (I see it in tags a lot with random gifsets of them) but it’s actually a completely different shirt and Constance puts a load of holes in it. I wonder if Sam went and bought the Purple Dog Shirt because he felt sad about losing  _a_  purple shirt.

I have developed a lot of weird Sam headcanons this episode. 

* * *

Also Sam should probably have noticed that Dean putting on ‘Highway to Hell’ right before driving back home to Jess was  _not_  a good sign.

* * *

Welp, all the female characters are now fridged and the show proper begins. Dean’s still a squeaky terrified baby bunny, Sam’s first alarming little moments (like making that crappy ex-husband guy  _cry_ ) have occurred so he’s a squeaky terrified baby bunny with fangs, and there’s no sign of Cas yet… The world remains intact, if already filled with the primordial darkness of the season 1 camera work.

217 to go.

* * *

(If you need to ask, once this episode ended and I was asked for an initial opinion I did pick Dean. I will  _always_  have sympathy for the shorter sibling… I didn’t realise until later I was sympathising with the shorter sibling who was the same height as my brother whose gangling height  _makes_ me always sympathise with the shorter sibling. In fact, I think me expressing this opinion was what lead to my (even shorter than me) friends trying to demonstrate to me how big the guys actually were. It involved a lot of hopping with arms held high above their heads.)


	2. 1x02

HELLO I was going to do productive things today but I woke up feeling like I’d been punched in the face (because I couldn’t sleep for hours last night, [tormented by Dean’s sock monkey from the Pilot](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/119901491308/dean-stops-outside-a-junk-shop-abruptly-sam-gets) and I have a negative constitution modifier), so let’s watch a murky show with morning sunlight streaming into the room. I’ll mostly be guessing by the dialogue what’s going on.

* * *

Dear Lizzy: this is the last episode you will watch for some time that doesn’t start with “Saving People, Hunting Things. The Family Business.” TREASURE IT.

* * *

I like how the Previously has “No chick flick moments” in it as the one bit of Dean characterisation we ‘need’ to know to watch. I guess it’s better than Sam’s characterisation being portrayed entirely about Jess dying.

* * *

You know the actual show ruined the opening of this for me… When you compare it to that season 7 episode with the ridiculous glampers and “Sounds of nature” which was  _hilarious_  I’m sorry, a straight up dudes in the woods camping trip being every dudes in the woods camping trip from a horror movie just seems too predictable. (To be honest, I watched a ton of horror movies before I was 18; when I was 18 I started watching Supernatural; at the same time I was actually old enough to go  _see_  horror films, it had all been totally subverted by this show… I actually have  _barely watched_  horror since starting SPN. I don’t miss it too much in hindsight. :P)

* * *

I do feel sorry for this guy (Tommy) though, because in eight years he gets fridged for manpain and that doesn’t happen often enough on this show. Was it a subversion of how this episode is the heyday of women fridged for manpain with Sam’s Jess-rage right at the forefront, making the dude’s death a commentary, or was it just because by season 8 they were  _almost out of women_. And Charlie still had her “HANDS OFF” sign. (Season 10 is the fridged for manpain Renaissance.)

Nah, it was probably because even by season 8 they’d already burned through a  _significant_  number of extras from the early seasons in the Carver era fever-dream re-casting of the show (Jury’s out on if it’s been Purgatory all along in the style of how LOST… didn’t quite turn out to be Purgatory all along).

BTW I was looking up Rudy for something a few days ago and he had previously been on the show as well. At this point perhaps we should start compiling people we see in the rewatch who  _haven’t_  returned yet and speculating on who they’ll play next time around.)

* * *

Thinking of Rudy, I’m pretty sure this make-you-pee-a-bit thing with Jess’s hand shooting out of the grave is motivated entirely by guilt, not grief - “I should have told you the truth,” Sam says, in reference to the conversation he and Dean had on that bridge last episode, where Dean challenged him about never telling Jess what they do. Considering later we find out Sam’s dreams and stuff are at least a little demonic, there’s a nice parallel to the mirror scene with Cas n Rudy in 10x23 where Dean’s guilt at hurting/getting them killed caused his Darkness-addled brain to conjure up visions of them (It’s going to bug me that Sam got all this experience with dealing with creepy crap going on his head and never once did Dean  _properly_  talk to him about it over season 10 so we’re just not going to go there :P)… What I am saying is have we talked enough about this new Sam/Jess Dean/Cas parallel yet?

* * *

Thinking of season 8 and don’t even  _ask_  how I managed to make this connection, except that I was already musing on bears after Dean’s adorable comment, but the only actual Death By Bear on this show as far as I recall is Prometheus, and the lady he met on the mountain was called Hayley, and so is the girl from this episode.

Basically if you know someone called Hayley,  _don’t go into the woods_.

* * *

“Since when are you all shoot first ask questions later?” “Since now.” *Dean looks really impressed with his lil bro being all murdery.* Aw, they grow up so fast.

TBH since Sam has spent basically the entire show being foreshadowed for a downwards arc,  _on_  a downwards arc, or atoning for/damaged by a downwards arc, we basically just have the Pilot as a point of reference for how he was remotely meant to be as the sweet lil Sammy Dean has in his head. Considering he had fangs  _even in that_  episode, I am pretty sure one of the longest running things in the show is that Dean literally has no idea who Sam is if not the bundle of blankets John handed him.

* * *

If Dean  _hadn’t_  gone to see Hayley on a hunch that she would be hot (okay maybe to ask questions and work the case properly) then basically they would have wandered into the woods and been eaten by a wendigo and the show would have ended in 2 episodes. I mean they didn’t know what it was when they got there but they relied a LOT on her team to find their way up to the ridge.

* * *

Probably in future releases of the show Sam’s laptop will be CG’d into one of those product placement Windows laptops from season 10. I’m glad I bought my DVDs when I did.

* * *

Pfft Dean. Dean Dean Dean. We are  _two_  episodes in and you are making things weird and uncomfortable.

Yes, let’s posture about hunting monsters and make fun of the guy for  _only_  hunting deer and bears (which to be honest Roy seemed to be paying zero attention to Dean’s attempts to assert himself as alpha male hunter of the group), and then when he grabs Dean to stop him standing in the bear trap, he gets really up in his face instead of actually looking around to assess the danger. Nope, you are way too in deep in whatever game you (and only you) were playing there… I mean, I don’t even think this is like sexual tension or whatever, except that Dean had a weird reaction to Roy from the start because of him being a competent woodsman, and Dean is… not. And then he sort of assumes because he’s been angling for a fight that this is Roy snapping and asserting dominance over him, so the feathers go up and Dean’s like I’m just going to stare you down with all this weird chemistry between us boiling over. And Roy is totally oblivious because he’s the bigger guy.

Dean is basically a small yapping puppy at this point in the show.

* * *

Thinking of Purgatory and the woods: Purgatory AU which is 99% the actual show but where when Dean lands there all he has on him is a knife and a giant bag of M&Ms. Benny is not impressed.

* * *

For the record there’s another bit where Dean tries another really close up stare at Roy that totally fails and he just does those “pfft well then” eyebrows he’s so good at. It’s right after Roy’s all “Aw sweet, don’t worry about me,” when Sam tells him not to go off alone, so I think Dean was valiantly trying to defend Sam’s honour and Roy is selectively oblivious to this.

So far in this re-watch Roy is definitely my favourite character. It’s interesting that basically in from the second episode they’re setting Dean up not just as having this façade, but framing it in the context of his perception of his and others’ masculinity. He’s got such a desperate need to prove himself, but it’s clear that it’s a  _struggle_  and he’s angry about that, and it’s not just the default state of his character to be the manly dude. Yes, he’s probably like 12 years old here (I didn’t do the maths to check but I am fairly sure Dylan Everett’s voice was deeper except for the odd teenagery squeak, which means canonically he’s probably older than Dean is meant to be here) but typical hero dude guys often end up effortlessly taking leadership or conceding graciously to a stronger alpha male with that more enlightened take on the trope; generally if it’s highlighted it’s to make the dude look better, and if not he looks better anyway by assuming his Natural Leader Dude Role because he is A Man. Dean being pissy about Roy is basically a delight of silent subversion of the tropes.

* * *

And then Sam just casually looms over him and gets all threatening, making the point Dean was trying to make right when he and Roy first clashed but Sam actually gets the point home about other things in the woods being better hunters - without turning it into a one-up thing where Dean was trying to swagger around about how he had been in tougher hunts than Roy.

* * *

After this confrontation where Sam kinda trumped everyone, Dean is a bit easier with Roy - he’s like, “No one likes a sceptic, Roy,” kind of mocking him for snorting at them drawing runes in the ground. Sort of like Dean sneaks by past Roy in the pecking order because he’s there on Sam’s ticket and he feels more confident about jabbing at him without it being so much of a weird battle for dominance, because he’s seen Roy get put down a notch by Sam.

* * *

 The “Saving people, hunting things” conversation 1) sort of looked like a marriage proposal with Dean shifting around to sit in front of Sam and how he held out the journal making it a sort of symbol of them going hunting together, and 2) had Sam and Dean talking about all the anger Sam has and how to successfully bottle it up so as not to go on a murder revenge rampage. Sam is so driven and wants to move on and continue his rampage. “It’s the only thing I can think about,” he says.

“You can’t keep it burning over the long haul, it’s going to kill you,” Dean warns him, and shows him that they need to focus on the saving people aspect in order to make it bearable, with the focus on fixing broken families and putting them back together. Aw. I mean, friggin’ annoying soundbite aside, this is one of the best chunks of dialogue in the show.

* * *

*watches Roy get yanked up into the tree* Aw man, I liked Roy.

… I do wonder how much How To Win Friends And Influence Monsters was like, Wendigo mk ii.

And Dean n Rick was a completely different story. :P Perhaps a commentary on how far Dean had come from this prickly hedgehog.

* * *

Gosh but the wendigo backstory about how they’re just cannibals who became monsters. It’s the first monster on the show and it doesn’t really fit in the mythos from later about them all being Purgatory things (I wonder if there  _are_  wendigos in Purgatory?) - all the others seem to fit pretty well, but these are a very human monster - a human warped by consuming other humans.

* * *

I swear Sam’s red shirt and those claw marks are like a really grim aesthetic post.

~~aesthetic~~

* * *

Roy dripping blood on Hayley is weirdly reminiscent of Sam n Jess from last episode. I wonder if that was intentional or they just did it to be creepy without contemplating? I know a lot of people were musing on Rowena mirroring Azazel after sitting there with blood dripping on her in 10x03 although to be fair she had literally pinned some guys to the ceiling. And it was much more embedded in the language of the show at that point.

* * *

Ah the fabled M&M trail. And then you remembered Dean killed Hansel and tbh basically nothing stays sacred on this show if you leave it long enough.

* * *

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “Yeah I think so.” Winchester dialogue. It’s the best part of the show.

* * *

TBH I’m pretty sure the wendigo is why they stuck with decidedly human-looking monsters for the entire rest of the series. It’s barely on screen and in the dark and it still drags down the quality of everything around it.

* * *

At the end of the episode they do the whole “But I’m driving” thing and Dean chucks Sam the keys and it’s all well and good but then we literally cut to this:

Guy with the prominent side hair-flick in the passenger side. I bet Sam did like one dodgy corner and Dean freaked out and didn’t let him drive again for weeks.

* * *

Welp, 216 left to go. World is still intact, if  _suspiciously_  dark; they are hunting people and saving things (Roy is their first fatality but he was sort of a dick so it’s… okay?). Cas was  _extremely_  poorly written this episode.


	3. 1x03

Or: in which Lizzy quietly comes to accept that this was probably the beach episode and this is why we can’t have nice things.

* * *

  


Okay we can have some nice things. (That was gratuitous, I know. There are few things I like more than that shot. That bit where Cas does the thing. Basically.)

Honestly didn’t know this episode was where that adorable moment was from. I mean I knew it was early on because look at the sparkle in his eye but seriously. Nothing world-shatteringly terrible has happened to Dean in his adult life yet.  _Nothing_. He may be a mess of childhood trauma and daddy issues but he is  _cheerful_. There’s nothing weary about this, nothing dodgy or tired or uncertain. He’s cute, he knows it, and he’s working it.

* * *

In that moment he’s flirting with the waitress who inspires the same overt crotch-protect as in 8x07 with Cas. Cas cleaned up nicely in Dean’s head is exactly equal to this:

Just for a sort of quick easy guide on how hot Dean thinks Cas is: same level as someone literally cast to be the random T&A of the episode to make up for the grim, non-sexualised death of the girl in the bikini earlier.

* * *

Anyway. Sam and Dean argue the same argument of the whole first part of the season: go hunt monsters vs go hunt John. Sam is one-note and determined, Dean is enjoying the holiday with Sam (except for the cockblocking) and has a long-time saving people backstory - he talks about spending all that time hunting with John, so we know he’s taking a stance on being the Family Business guy.

It’s quite possible at this point Dean literally doesn’t know how to function without a family member around - as soon as John disappears he dashes to grab Sam. He can handle being  _alone_  and occasionally split up from the group (i.e. he wasn’t with John investigating Constance), but not unsupported. Not knowing where his nearest family member is - the only back up he can trust. He’s even perfectly capable of finding cases on his own - it’s his studious newspaper article circling that leads them onto this one - but he just doesn’t  _want_  to. And the fact he’s sitting around circling things in newspapers in the first place speaks of him trying to find one more case to keep Sam interested and by his side when his interest is flagging in exchange for looking for John.

There’s an argument to be made, especially with John ditching them entirely and leaving them a few old cases here and there that Dean is the ONLY “saving people” guy in the family (John left to follow a lead on Yellow Eyes, not because he was in trouble. Along with leaving them a follow up case in the journal (Wendigo), if he HAD been in trouble Sam and Dean would have had it latch onto them instead when they got to John’s last known location, and been mugged by demons in episode 1, so we have to assume John just likes the dramatic exit, haring after the new thing to hunt and leaving his work behind for them). While Dean and John piddled around doing these low-level cases in their missing time, John doesn’t stick around to deal with Constance, suddenly her case seeming completely insignificant in the face of actual clues on Mary’s killer.

You could argue Dean isn’t just trying to keep Sam motivated to stay with him, but he’s seen what happened to John first-hand over these years, seen the result of it with the abandoned room in 1x01, his growing realisation of what this means with the journal in 1x02 (and the importance of the phrasing of “ **I think he wants** usto pick up where he left off” - Dean can only guess at John’s intent for them, but the legacy and job has been handed to him while John is still nominally alive, with him discarding that part of his identity entirely and leaving it for Dean to find -

this is way beyond the scope of the Constance case - and he stays the guardian of this legacy as we know John’s journal stays tucked into his inside pocket way beyond its actual use)… 

Dean sees that same anger in Sam about Jess and he is doing all this to  _stop_  him going down the same road as John and losing sight of the “saving people” side and turning purely into “hunting things”.

* * *

Excuse me a few minutes while I look 10 years down the line and sob bitter tears for these characters. :P

* * *

It’s taken me like 3 hours to get 8 minutes into the episode.

* * *

I just love that after they joke about the Loch Ness Monster Dean just gives Sam this really significant look. I mean we’ve never actually  _had_  a lake monster episode, but… They know something. Leviathan were ancient sea monsters technically, but no, back here in season 1, the Winchesters already know something. Or they’re just acting more credible and worldly-wise at this point before they get really hung up on deciding that things like unicorns, angels and the Easter bunny don’t exist. (I AM JUST SAYING, 2 out of 3 is a pattern. WHERE IS MY EASTER BUNNY EPISODE??)

* * *

Ooh, their first briefly glimpsed motel room, where they basically just stop to read news articles on the internet and Dean sniffs all their clothes. Genuinely convinced he’s a puppy. 

  


“The motel is cramped and dark, and I think the wallpaper is meant to be bacon. Sure doesn’t smell like it.”

\- Dean’s note in his [motel journal](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/107221439393/7-14-plucky-pennywhistles-magical-menagerie) is short and to the point. He doesn’t have time for this shit. He underlines the word bacon.

* * *

Uugh Dean’s torn jeans. Ugh Dean and kids. Uuuuuuuuuugh Dean playing with army men. Uuuuuuuuugh Dean drawing things and talking about his family. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH Dean’s childhood trauma.

While it’s really depressing, Lucas drawing all those whirlpools is one of the first things that actually really spooked me on this show. Gah.

* * *

Actually this episode is the first kinda really scary one in my opinion since it has some really uncanny stuff.

Like this bit where the guy is cutting up fish, and then the tap goes all blorpy and dark in the background. Some of it is kind of silly but the old ghost kills had a ton of horror to them we don’t really get so often now.

‘S probably the lack of practically black and white grimdark camera work. Everything is just slightly spookier because of that down this end of the show.

* * *

Uuugh Dean’s childhood trauma round 2. He’s really sad about basically everything - he looked nearly in tears with the guy talking about how his kids were dead, never mind this scene where he talks to Lucas and breaks everyone’s hearts. I mean we talk about that one a lot but generally this whole story upsets him so much.

* * *

I am baffled about Sam n Dean actually going to the correct authorities about this - I mean I’m not totally sure why they went back to the police station but it sounds like they actually… just… told… him? about the ghost wrecking the boat? 

My season 1 babies are so  _naive and innocent and sweet_.

* * *

Sam getting really baffled about Dean caring about what happens to the kid. He’s like “who are you and what have you done to my brother?” … I mean he was standing there right next to Dean the whole time while he went around bonding with Lucas - it was really obvious Dean and the kid clicked, not least because Lucas grabbed Dean in terror and clung to him… I dunno, their whole characterisation at this point regarding each other seems to be not to see what we’re being shown, except then I’m not entirely sure they ever really fully get the message - either of them - and once we’re past this get-to-know-each-other stage of us and them, we stop getting this sort of focus and it’s just taken for granted  _we_  know what they’re like (except for where there’s endless debates about that :P) and they never figured it out either. :P

* * *

I’ve always been so angry about her over-filling that bath; like it’s full to the brim and she just keeps the tap running. MAYBE THE GHOST WANTS TO KILL HER FOR WASTING WATER? HAD YOU CONSIDERED THAT?

* * *

Do you ever feel sorry for the props department having to bury like random bikes and stuff?

I can’t tell if the old school show was as bad with puns as the current show. Dean rattles off  _two_ lines about things being metaphorically buried in short succession.

* * *

And then everyone goes swimming and Dean is a hero and Sam mostly looks wet. Dean is rewarded for his empathy and being a sweetie pie with a chaste kiss (unlike how this episode started with him ogling the waitress at the diner).

* * *

215 to go? I think? *already losing track* I’m kind of glad Cas wasn’t in this episode because he has a history with wading out into lakes, and the water was very cold and black and spooky. Almost… full of darkness.

We’ll get our beach episode one day, Jensen. :3


	4. 1x04

The, uh, [apparently long-awaited](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/119930560973/i-so-cant-wait-for-you-to-rewatch-phantom) re-watch. I’m kinda glad the episode they were most excited about was  _only_  episode four. Imagine if they’d been like, “I can’t wait for you to re-watch 9x06!” and I’d have to be like, “Hon, I might be  _dead_  by the time I’m up to season 9.”

(I am not even in the habit of saying “hon” but in this case I think it would be necessary.)

Anyway I dedicate this re-watch to you.

* * *

After only three or four rounds apiece, I am already feeling my early-season slip into being a Sam!girl as Dean’s endless,  _endless_  “Dad’s on a hunting trip. Saving People. Hunting things.” voice over in the Previously begins to wear on me.

Honestly not sure why I’m not skipping it except that later seasons have so much to work with these Previouslys become a sort of art form of misdirection and spoilers for what’s to come and they are amusing enough to put up with.

I do think it’s interesting that those quotes highlight it’s all Dean pushing Sam into the life, because obviously narratively Sam is the unwilling protagonist, and Dean’s role therefore becomes about pushing him along just to be a narrative counterbalance… But even though in Wendigo for example Sam was like ‘pfft Dad’s not here let’s go’ he sticks it out and does the job when it actually comes down to it in the Saving People vs Hunting Things push and pull going on inside him, because he  _gets_  it’s about saving people still. He’s already trained to be a hunter as well, it’s not like Dean has to train him up or anything - they could have made him partially incompetent for lols just because he’s been out of it for a few years or something - but Sam bounces back into it like rubber. All the narrative tension at this point is on free will and choice - between Sam’s choice in where to go, and Dean as the agent of fate, and the one who keeps Sam’s free will in check. (Not like he  _oppresses_  him or anything, but this bubbles over in Scarecrow so… I should just make a note to come back to this train of thought (for an episode I have to watch by the end of the week to stay caught up aaaah) and actually start watching  _this_  episode. :P)

(I have performance anxiety now)

* * *

Aw yesss, TBTB have listened to my complaints about 1x03 being a terrible beach episode. This is it, guys! It’s happening! Sun, sea, sand, Cas inexplicably showing up 4 years early because angels can time travel and that’s canon. Crowley sneaking out to join them because these dweebs haven’t met a real demon yet so they won’t know yet about the Christo thing this episode has gone down in fandom notoriety for (and the writers are like  _stop asking us about Christo_  probably)…

…

Pants.

* * *

I have to say, thinking of abandoned demon lore, that I actually quite liked the playful demon cloud of black dots, especially the way it moved, sort of hypnotising him first before darting silently into his eyes. It’s not the same as the smoke, and honestly we never meet another demon like this, with a very specific MO and pattern. It’s pretty funny that the episode written to introduce us to all the demon lore to give us this grounding going forwards, is the least practical episode for giving us all the useful lore ever. Perhaps at this point  _so_  early on there was a sense to the writers that demons were some other entity entirely - it takes until season 3 to drop the revelation they were once human which is an earth-shaking piece of new canon. If we try to apply that retcon here in the place it really seems dodgy not to, I reckon either these low-key demons are like really angry spirits: they get up out of Hell but then fall into poltergeist patterns, just with the intelligence and free-roaming abilities of a demon.

Once the apocalypse arc really began to get under way, all the (very few) demons that had just been goofing around on Earth wrecking stuff for fun were recalled to actually fight under the banner of Hell. I like to think all those really dumb mooks that Sam n Dean endlessly kill are actually this sort of ‘just want to wreck stuff and have fun’ demon, but grumpily going along with whatever the Big Plan is at the time. They’re as nostalgic for season 1 as anyone else.

* * *

The terrible puns are NOT a new feature: “Time really does fly, huh?”

This demon’s  _entire motivation_  is wrecking shit just so he can make this pun. Yes, I am on pun watch. I am still seething over “really leaves a Mark” from 10x23.

* * *

Okay but if you divert your attention from Dean’s butt in this iconic scene, you will see that on the nightstand is a popcorn box with more wrappers bunched up in it. They were up late watching movies and this is adorable. (Dean says he was awake still at 3 because Sam wouldn’t settle, but I guess before that, back at an almost reasonable time they were watching movies…)

(It could also be that because they just eat really shitty food all the time, Dean figured popcorn was an actual acceptable meal, given it is technically a vegetable.)

* * *

Their discussion about sleep and fear is actually really interesting. The lead-in to this scene (aside from Dean’s butt) is Sam coming into the room, obscured by the glass in the wall. This wakes Dean up and it’s treated as a semi-scary moment with him reaching for the knife under his pillow to mounting tension, until Sam steps into picture carrying coffee and looking like a harmless puppy.

Then they talk about Sam not sleeping, and Dean is concerned, and Sam is like naaah it’s no big deal, I can function (it’s true, he gets REMARKABLY far into season 7 on worse sleep - this is small potatoes).

The focus here is on Sam not sleeping, because this is where the plot is going - Sam’s dreams and stuff. But Dean secretly cops to sleeping badly as well - it sounds like Dean was asleep or trying to sleep before the 3am moment when he noted Sam was still awake; Sam seems to have assumed Dean was asleep for longer than that because otherwise he wouldn’t have tried pretending this was all OK, with Dean knowing he got less than two hours, if any, thanks to this wake up call.

Along with the fact Sam coming in immediately woke Dean up and had him reaching for his knife, you have Dean coming across as edgy and nervous and a poor sleeper because he’s always got to be alert and ready to fight - and that he’s scared he’ll need to. We definitely see him sleeping in a more vulnerable way in the early seasons before he starts sleeping layered up on top of the covers, boots still on, and happily admitting he sleeps 4 hours a week by the grace of booze, or whatever. Like I said last episode, Dean hasn’t apparently had any major trauma yet (that we know about - I’m looking at you, Bloody Mary) but while this episode serves to showcase that  _even Dean Winchester can be scared of something_  like we’ve all bought his posturing (and this moment is another example of said posturing) up until he gets to the airport, even before we start poking at his greatest fear, we have this sign that, no, he is not okay, and he’s always at least a little frightened.

“You can’t let it get to you. You can’t bring it home like that,” Dean says, like he has never let it get to him; didn’t literally just demonstrate bringing it home with him in our re-introduction to him this morning. Sam drags out the knife from under the pillow and gets, “That’s not fear. That is precaution,” for his troubles. I mean it’s not just Dean’s hair in this scene, he actually is a spiky hedgehog curling in on himself when poked. On the  _surface_ level we have Sam as the focus of being distressed about Jess and therefore the emotional wreck who isn’t sleeping (”Too tired to argue” - Sam knows there’s more to it than this, but we don’t get any exploration of Dean’s deeply ingrained troubles because Sam’s sudden short term issues are overwhelming the story), but Dean is only holding up in comparison - the counterpoint to Sam again. We are introduced to him asleep because Sam is awake, but that’s not the full story, just the black and white surface level. Using Dean as a counterpoint to Sam means that these comments go unremarked in the narrative - we’re meant to be concerned about Sam with his issues being the reason to open up the conversation at all (and we are but they haven’t given us much to work with yet) but we should never let ourselves be fooled by Dean trying to reassure Sam by being the big brave brother who knows how to handle this crap. He’s only in a better place by dint of the narrative  _telling_  us he is. 

* * *

Ahaha their plane guy (Jerry aka the guy who comes back in season 8 to be Amelia’s dad) says he got an even trade getting Sam instead of John. I was talking with one of the last episodes I watched about how Dean substituted in Sam for John. And about how Sam’s on a delicate balance of turning into John right from the start what with their narrative parallels.

* * *

To be fair about their discussion about being Homeland Security, I don’t think Sam n Dean wandering in there pretending to be Wildlife Services would get them very far.

* * *

Heh, this poor guy who checked himself into the institution is actually very sensible. He looked up how much pressure was on the door and everything to check to see if he was hallucinating or not. Then he was like, nope, okay, that couldn’t have happened, there is definitely something wrong with me.

I mean, he probably did need the time off but I like him and his extremely level-headed, well-researched decision that he wasn’t very well. :P

Anyway he’s the first person to say “black eyes” here and it goes  _way_  too unremarked upon considering. 

* * *

Possibly one of the most beautiful lines is “Did you notice anything strange about him?” “Well… He had acid reflux, if that’s what you mean?”

It’s little things like that which sell you on a show.

The ongoing Winchester bafflement with demons is adorable and saddening.

* * *

[Suit up!](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/103073721008/this-is-just-reminding-me-of-how-gutted-i-was-that)

* * *

Aw man, Sam being sceptical of the EMF meter always makes me sad. Like, he was so proud of himself right there before you said that. I know you’re tired, Sam, but you’ve got to be more supportive. Dean is trying to win you over still, and you’re within your right to be sceptical of the lifestyle and poor decisions, but don’t knock his hard work. It’s funny, Sam’s in rebellion to John here by resisting at least the enthusiasm for the lifestyle Dean wants him to have, but what with the comment to substitute him in for John earlier in the episode, we’re getting a weird probable parallel to John being unsupportive of Dean’s genius here or something. I mean Sam KNOWS Dean is a genius, and he looks up to him, but being in a contrary state of mind at this point is not good for Dean’s self esteem.

* * *

I feel like people do not talk about Sam’s boyband phase enough:

I mean if that is not the moody cover of a solo album I don’t know what it is.

* * *

When they say they haven’t ever heard of demons doing stuff like this but they have heard of things like the Exorcist happening, it does make me curious about pre-show demons. For example, we know Crowley and his lot were merrily going around buying souls in a very traditional demon way, and low-key enough that unless you knew people who had it happen to them or noticed the pattern around a crossroads, there wasn’t so much to say about it.

But there appears to be a history of demons doing things like the Exorcist, or doing what Lilith did for kicks: going into a house and just  _fucking shit up_  for the family, on a very personal level. Again with the idea of old-school demonic practices being barely distinguishable from poltergeists and vengeful ghosts, per the idea of demons having always been messed up human spirits (with teh Darkness in them perhaps). Before all the big apocalypse drama kicked off, only a few BIG players (e.g. Abbadon and Azazel and those in their circles) were actually  _up_  to anything. I like the idea of demons as a low-key human affliction, in the same leagues as poltergeists; lots of lore on exorcisms and traps, even cures per the MoL’s interest, but no sense of narrative, just another type of monster.

* * *

I am like 90% sure the new motel room has the same bedspread as the last motel room. Hang on.

  


Dean makes a note in his [motel journal](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/107221439393/7-14-plucky-pennywhistles-magical-menagerie): “No matter how far we travel or how classy the joint, the diamond pattered bedspread follows us. I’m waiting for Sam to get off the laptop researching dumb demon crap so I can check to see if these motels are the same chain or if there’s something unsettling afoot.”

* * *

“Demons don’t want anything except for death and destruction for its own sake.”

Well, they also like karaoke and hot wings, Dean. You’ll get there.

… Pun on hot wings intended. Thanks, Benny.

* * *

Dean tells us 40 in Biblical numerology means death. Does that mean you die for good  _age_  40, getting us up to season 15, or does it mean the show won’t end until  _season 40_?

* * *

Aw Dean looks so tiny when he’s confessing to being scared of flying. And gets even MORE high-pitched. It’s adorable. Sam thinks so - he’s laughing at Dean all through take off. 

That bit where he tells Dean about Christo and keeps calling him back to tell him what to do and Dean is like “I know, I’m not an idiot!”… Is the bit with the EMF meter still weighing on him? I think Sam was just making sure, because fair enough, but Dean might feel this is an ongoing thing (I mean this whole opening arc is about them figuring out how to work together and stuff - right from the Pilot where they squabble over their google searches in the library).

* * *

When Dean goes to talk to Amanda, instead of lying to her like he did over the phone, he’s semi-honest about the fact he’s scared of flying, and gets a much more open conversation as a reward.

I mean not like phoning her up and saying, “There’s going to be a demon on your flight” would probably have worked but.

* * *

Hm, another slight jump scare with Sam on Dean - along with him intensely telling Dean to calm down, Dean honestly seems kinda scared of Sam - only subconsciously maybe - all episode.

* * *

Also completely unrelated, just before Sam grabs him Dean’s doing his sweep of the plane with the EMF and some random guy smiles like “ _hey”_ and Dean gives this awkward little wave back and honestly I have no idea what that was about.

The demon also gives Dean a little flirty nod when he comes out of the bathroom. It totally knows who they are: it recognises Sam at least, and Sam’s the plot-significant one. I am incredibly amused by the thought of demons gossiping about the Winchesters down in Hell even this early on - or, well, Cain said stuff was written about them on demon bathroom walls. What this is doing is giving me the mental image of this no-name demon from season 1 in the same bathroom as Cain, making it super awkward about bumping into the Father of Murder, demon celebrity.

* * *

Oh the smoke does come  _out_  of the guy’s mouth.

Sam is such a badass exorcist in this.

* * *

And then the demon’s back in Hell telling everyone  _you’d never believe what just happened to me._

Cain’s like  _oh my god, I just can’t pee in peace.  
_

* * *

Aw Dean’s wearing his maroon shirt again. Very fitting for his first demon episode. :3

* * *

Ah, and they find out about John changing his answer phone to redirect everyone to Dean: symbolically once again ending his part in “saving people” and putting it all on Dean’s shoulders now.

* * *

I am  _finally_  off the first disc! Woo! Bring on the next… 214 episodes?

So in summary: world still intact, brothers kind of adorable, Cas totally unimpressed with how incompetent they are around a single demon.  _I did not sign up for this when I agreed to be Dean Winchester’s shoulder angel_.

I’m going for a walk and some fresh air. Maybe I’ll go to the beach.


	5. 1x05

*stands between two mirrors*

“Castiel. Castiel. Castiel.”

*waits expectantly*

* * *

Wait didn’t Dean do exactly that in 10x23? :P 

#too soon

* * *

I like how realistic this sleepover feels, and even the bit with Bloody Mary, uh, from actual IRL experience of being the dumb kid saying it so I know exactly how that terror feels after deciding it’s completely stupid and taking a stance, but then you struggle to say the last words anyway once you’re alone in the dark, and you can’t  _not_  say them because you just told everyone it was stupid and wouldn’t happen…

But I will always feel weird about how the house just happens to have 100 mirrors in the hall. This is even weirder than the lady over-filling her bath in 1x03 - that was just wasteful, but this is serious vanity. I feel like we’re getting subtle morality lessons about what makes ghosts attack you, beside the obvious motivation.

* * *

Eeew eye horror. I can see why Dean wasn’t impressed about their hard-earned money being spent on this. It’s not like paying to go to the fun fair or something. (Well, Sam wouldn’t like that one… Basically they need to pick better vacation ideas. :P)

I do find it pretty funny that eyeballs liquefying is like some freak thing here, because after season 4 it’s just angels blasting out eyes wherever they go. I guess the make up department was really proud of this one and wanted another go at it. Hundreds of other goes at it.

* * *

I spent this scene completely distracted by Sam’s hair twin:

* * *

Why do so many people drive while on the phone in this show? The other girl actually seriously could have killed her friend by doing that screaming prank on her since she was supposed to be paying attention to the road not listening to her friend succumb to Bloody Mary… Like imagine if she said it, but wasn’t guilty of anything, and then her friend crashed in alarm, and died. And then Bloody Mary would suddenly have a reason to go after her. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

I maintain that is what should have happened just because it would have been funnier and the fates in this universe are established to be pretty capricious at times.

* * *

“And a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave.”

Honestly the Winchesters must have the biggest pool of random happenings and anecdotes in the back of their mind. They spend so much time off-screen reading local town histories and websites with weird news stories on… Happy ending where they retire and Sam writes a book with all these stories in them.

Dean literally can not  _believe_  Sam voluntarily goes diving into dusty old collections of newspapers in backwater libraries for fun when “retirement” was ostensibly about not getting killed or accidentally-deliberately destroying the world yet again, but also because lurking in libraries was the  _worst_. But his sarcastic conversations with Cas about the stories Sam finds are actually sneakily noted down, and the Destiel anecdotes in there make up like 90% of the appeal of buying the book.

Dean is even less impressed when he discovers Sam’s novelist fame is for dramatising his marriage with Cas.

Cas is unbelievably touched that Sam would write so lovingly about their lives.

He eventually brings Dean around.

There’s 4 more books.

* * *

This motel’s theme is brown with bedspreads which look like what visual migraines look like on the inside of my eyeballs. Considering I’ve  _got_  one it took me a moment to realise I was actually looking at a thing on the screen, not my brain melting (I am aware of the irony with the episode). Okay, no, but geometric shapes genuinely make me feel really ill when I’m like this. I’m not screencapping it for the collection.

* * *

I just really love this zoom and their positioning:

I have a fondness for Dean perching, but Sam looks  _so huge_. And Dean, even though he’s very sympathetic, also looms over her. Like, sitting that way should be a casual way to establish a more easy atmosphere between them without pushing the whole “Dean flirts with every girl” thing that he has done so far and putting her in a different position might be a casual way to sit with a friend IRL, but the framing when they’re listening to her has Dean  _looming_  over her even more than Sam with his power stance, since he’s at least off to the side. Given the context it isn’t so much to make her look small as to put all the sympathy on her with them looking gently at her as she cries and they reassure her and work around to asking for help.

This episode so far has featured the Winchesters practically as side characters more than any so far - there a deep focus on the lives of the people affected by this. I kind of miss this most about the old stuff. Dead in the Water had huge stretches which were all about the drama of the families involved as well. We don’t get a lot of that now - I mean we were commenting on how refreshing 10x08 was being mostly about Jody n Donna but I wonder what the screen time breakdown would be like compared to some of these early episodes where they were just about the other people by habit?

* * *

I like how after taking on all the research in the last bit, Dean sends Sam to do the next round of research. Like, you’ve slept enough this episode, Sammy. Go forth and sit in a library while I catch the sun with my new friend.

I MEAN if we’re talking about Dean and personal space here… He’s been established as flirty and getting a kiss as a reward in the last few episodes - now he just gets linked to this girl by sitting really close to her all the time and no further comment. (TBH the framing of this episode so far is really unclear about if she thinks Sam n Dean are a couple and she’s just made a gay best friend, although presumably the weirdness around her finding them sneaking to the bathroom together is negated by her actually believing them about ghosts now… Unlike how in Angel Heart literally nothing undid the accidentally married trope between Dean n Cas :P Teehee.)

* * *

Honestly I can’t even watch this scene I’m giggling too much at Dean’s face here:

* * *

I like how they just smartly work out Mary’s story between them. I mean, it seemed kinda obvious to the viewer, but I like that they still puzzled it out without being told. :D

* * *

“Technically I’m not supposed to have a copy of this.” Sam and Dean exchange “I like this guy” looks.

…

I’m still hung up on the fact they were searching people murdered in front of mirrors. I mean I don’t really know how likely that is to show up in a search but it seems like such a random detail.

* * *

Aw man the Bloody Mary freak out in the classroom is one of the scarier bits in these early episodes. And she already doubted a couple of times if she was crazy, and then this, where no one else knows about the ghost thing she really does just look like she’s having a screaming meltdown in the middle of class. I feel really sorry for her because even if she  _knows_  it was a ghost right now, when she tries to go back to her life, she’ll almost certainly be pushed to therapy for this and what if over time she starts to doubt that what happened was even real? :/ There’s an argument for getting into the Hunter lifestyle just because the idea that people you loved were killed by terrifying monsters gets more and more ridiculous when you live the civilian life day in day out after that…

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I’m just sad for the side characters.

* * *

Aargh I didn’t realise the girl was called Charlie. Now I am actively distressed.

* * *

TBH I’m amazed Charlie didn’t die because of the guys looking at her with their huge sparkly eyes. Don’t look them directly in the eye Charlie.

* * *

Aw and then Sam smartly comes up with the idea of making sure Mary is in the mirror when they smash it. My little puppy is doing so well today. :3

Awww Dean trying to reassure Sam that Jess wasn’t his fault. Like, pull over the car level need to have an urgent dramatic conversation - back then Dean valued stopping to talk instead of just driving long paying zero attention to the road. It all feels so much more real than floating along having metaphorical conversations.

His “You WHAT” face when Sam is “it wouldn’t really be a secret if I told you,” though. I mean, just because it’s now a plot-relevant thing he keeps the secret, and Dean’s clearly thinking “But you had the secret this whole time  _until now_?”

I quite like Sam deciding he has to put himself on the line to get Bloody Mary though - it’s a nice little hero moment of  _using_  his darkness and secrets and stuff for the greater good.

* * *

Ah, the great mirror shop. :D Probably more of a hassle to film than the plane crash or whatever.

I mean the total murky darkness must really help.

Further to my complaints about bad vacations, this is the worst sleep over ever doing Bloody Mary in a creepy junk shop. Even the chandelier above Sam has reflective surfaces.

* * *

7 years for Sam

14 years

Pfft Dean laying out the policemen is adding years of a different sort once we get to their law enforcement trouble era. :P 

7 years for Dean.

…

They literally smashed 3 mirrors between them.

* * *

Oh, Mary is back. :P I forgot about that. One of the cooler smart things Dean comes up with when he instinctively grabs the mirror to make her confront herself. :D

14 years bad luck for Dean.

Okay they burned through those years  _easily_. I mean both of them would have been done with this by the time they each got out of Hell.

Although didn’t I predict from Phantom Traveller that season 14 would be the end thanks to Dean’s Biblical numerology comment? And if they’re each carrying 14 years bad luck which only includes time on the surface, then… That’s another season 1 indicator of season 14 being the end.

* * *

“You’re my brother and I’d die for you, but there are some things I’ve got to keep to myself.” Oh man. Oooh man. Sam. You know that’s a bad idea.  _Why is this always your story_?

And we got our visions of Jess moment to match all those times Dean saw Cas while feeling guilty about leaving him behind/hurting him. Welp. :P

* * *

213 to go. Some good early seasons Destiel in here. Cas’s characterisation is very consistent. The world is still intact, Dean still has a sparkle in his eyes… Sam less so but he was always kinda gloomy.

I feel like I was oversold on how many mirrors they smashed.


	6. 1x06

Or: in which a monster learns it’s a  _really bad idea_  to turn into Dean just because it thought he was pretty.

* * *

I’m flagging on this challenge because I’ve had a headache for the past few days but I need to do 2 a day at least occasionally… This one should be easy, right? :P *ominous music* (or, well, the episode starting)

* * *

Little detail that catches my eye right off the bat:

The Poor Unfortunate Victim is wearing peacock patterns on her shirt - peacock patterns reoccur in Dream a Little Dream of Me, which, there’s a pretty good suggestion they remember details like this? (like… I think was it Sam wears a yellow tie in all the djinn episodes or something? There’s little things that actually sneak in like that :D) So maybe the shirt was random here or not but I guess peacocks became associated with facing a dark mirror of yourself?

(Wait… Dark? The Darkness will take the form of a honking great peacock - you heard it here first!)

* * *

Shifter!Dean doesn’t look anything like Dean despite having the same face, and even in this split second look, he doesn’t even really look like any  _other_  version of Dean we see over the years. Gah Jensen. Stop.

(don’t stop)

* * *

Aw Sam and his college friends. I wonder what happened to them? (those that didn’t end up being plants from Lucifer that is :P) They probably just think Sam was the weird drop out, unless the news stories about his various mass murderer sprees made it to them. In which case they all think they dodged a bullet with him disappearing on them like that.

…

I really hope they don’t start thinking terrible things about what happened to Jess.

* * *

There’s a theme about lying here for the last couple of episodes. In Phantom Traveller Dean sucked at lying to the air steward, but managed to talk to her when he was  _closer_  to the truth but omitted it - like Sam does with his college friends - but then had to tell her the truth anyway about the demon in order to get full co-operation. They try lying to the girl in Bloody Mary but she threatens to scream and they are forced to tell her the truth and that gets them her help - when she says she feels bad about lying they tell her it’s for the greater good. The drama of the episode for the boys is about Sam first keeping a secret and then refusing to  _tell_  Dean the secret, along with sort of lying about how he’s okay considering the secret is about how he is really, concerningly not okay… Now he’s being set up as lying to his college friends and Dean calling him out on it and saying that lying by omission is still lying (like Sam should just tell them he’s off hunting monsters? No, Dean wants Sam to cut them out of his life for the sake of not having attachments or people you have to lie to.

“A job like this you can’t get close to people.”

Wow, Dean, you’re damaged.

This makes me think of [the nice (nice being tragic) message](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120035761348/really-enjoying-your-rewatches-thanks-4-them) I got about Dean being alone and how that comes across in these early episodes. Once again the conversation is about Sam and how he’s coping or not with the hunter life, but Dean as his guide or counterpoint reveals some really tragic things about himself. Sam has friends, so Dean has to be alone. Sam has to  _want_  normal human interaction, so Dean has to find it something they shed to cope. (Needless to say I’m just going to blame this all on John and move on, I have too much of a headache for more in-depth probing. :P)

I’m not sure to be happier that Dean starts letting more people in over the years and actually tries building these support systems for himself outside of family, depressed they have all been torn down by the point of current canon, or what. :P 

* * *

Ahaha further to my musings on Sam’s friends all thinking HE is a serial killer; Zach is introduced by being a murderer and Dean’s like “What kind of people were you hanging out with?”

This is a universe where statistically it seems likely everyone you know will be framed for being a mass-murderer at one point or another.

“Sounds like you know Zach about as well as he knows you.” Dean equating their job with human serial killer-y ickkyness or just me being jaded by later canon where they stop noticing that sort of thing? :P

* * *

I like how Dean protests but then it just cuts right to them driving. Puppy dog eyes. Definitely.

* * *

Ahaha the girl is called Becky. I know a fictional fangirl who squealed when she read about a tiny blonde Becky meeting Sam. He calls her “Bec”… Poor Becky. :P I can see why she got so attached to him.

* * *

Hm, I suppose it’s bad when they lie about being cops but only when it’s to friends. *10 seasons of them literally never caring about lying about being law enforcement*

* * *

If this was season 9 they’d interview that barking dog for answers.

* * *

You know… They actually haven’t done a doppelgänger episode. I suppose they have shifters to explore the themes or whatever, but… Well, they’re death omens as well, aren’t they?

We haven’t had a banshee episode either, while we’re on the subject. Still obvious monsters and ghosts to go!

* * *

Thinking of Sam and sleep, they’re investigating the shifter at 5:30 in the morning. Dean has coffee and looks unimpressed and like this could have happened much later in the day, even if it does mean there will be fewer witnesses around if they end up in a weird situation.

* * *

Heh Sam is wearing a brown hoodie and blue shirt and Dean is wearing a blue jacket and brown plaid. Not sure we’ve ever seen this plaid since? I guess if this is the same set of clothes the shifter steals that’s a good reason.

*takes a shot for ‘every culture in the world’* [windmillcrusader](http://tmblr.co/mhnfIdvx-oe2-NBpLH-vrqg) (I hadn’t even watched this part when you messaged me >.>)

Shot of water. It’s late and I’m sick. :P

* * *

Oops and there’s the lying coming around to get Sam. … Did Dean know what was said on the phone or did he just guess?

Anyway he’s really emphasising them not being like other people, and then offers Sam a gun as one of the ‘perks’ of being an outcast from society… I’m not blaming John Winchester for how obviously broken this is but… I’m kinda blaming John Winchester. Guns are not a replacement for friends, Dean.

* * *

Ahaha yes let’s split up in an episode about a monster that copies people’s forms. No biggie.

When we watched this last summer my friend ended up convinced that shifter!Dean stayed Dean basically until he went to Hell and Cas brought back the real one. She was very sorry for him despite how murdery the shifter was.

* * *

Nodding back to “guns are not replacements for friends”, argh shifter!Dean pointing out that Dean might have wanted to go to college and make friends but he felt he HAD to stick around to help John - is it going to go through all the random little points of trauma I picked up on earlier and re-emphasise them horribly?

Oh look here’s the shifter saying that Dean thinks that sooner or later everyone leaves him. I can’t tell if it’s awful that Cas keeps leaving or nice that he turns up again anyway and Dean can’t be rid of him when he tries. :P

(It’s those times he doesn’t try and Cas does go that hurt. :( Bah.)

Uugh and the fact Dean thinks he’s a freak.

… And then the first thing actual Dean says is to call the shifter a freak.

* * *

This feels dodgy that shifter!Dean uses the truth and describes itself to Becky to win her sympathy - after all the discussion of the truth and how important it was or wasn’t to tell people now the monster uses it as a weapon.

It also calls itself a freak, sort of scribbling under the line that links it to Dean.

I guess season 6 suggests that shifters all come about because alpha shifter goes around impregnating random women as their husbands and then comes to collect… Or perhaps a lot of shifters use their abilities to do that. I wonder if they can’t stick with one form too long, like they  _have_  to change at some point and leave a horrible skin soup on the floor. Makes it really hard to sustain a long-term relationship…

Anyway I guess either the shifters weren’t coming to collect the babies (especially if it was just unstructured seeding rather than part of, like, a project the alpha shifter seemed to have) so this one basically had no idea what was wrong with it - doesn’t even understand its own lore - so it has come up with this explanation for itself. It seems totally adrift. This retcon about how shifters spread actually works very neatly to fix the canon inconsistencies from this episode. If the later shifter episodes in between don’t do anything to change it, I think they manage to scoot by on this one. :P

(And obviously Bloodlines didn’t happen, so.)

* * *

Uuugh so we have shifter!Dean pretending to be Dean talking about the shifter, saying “It’s funny, I kinda understand him, he’s all alone, close to no one… All he wants is someone to love him. He’s like me.” … This fucks up a sensitive Dean girl you know? I mean is this not the theme they were pressing on Dean all episode about him being lonely? Not subtle.

I suppose considering how the shifter has these violent urges to torture and kill, but it ISN’T to eat people or anything like a lot of monsters do (i.e. they often need to eat very certain parts of people to magically sustain themselves) and shifters seem otherwise very human but with the whole shifting thing, BUT are still violent monsters anyway… This is the start of the ongoing “who’s the real monster” thing, and showing us well well in advance of it coming to anything, that just as the shifter relates to Dean and Dean would hypothetically relate to the shifter if he wasn’t so grossed out/pissed off by it, that those same violent urges are in him… Not like that hasn’t recently been important or anything. :P

(Of course, Dean IS revolted with the shifter and obviously doesn’t just easily start torturing people for fun right after this or anything, buuut perhaps that revulsion is not just seeing his own face on someone else misusing it for these horrible things, but if that darkness (whoops, *takes another shot*) is something he kinda sympathises with this early on and hates that he does…

I dunno.)

* * *

And then at the end Dean calls Sam a freak and himself too and kinda embraces it? I don’t know, that seems very surface layer-y “lol everything is fine” as a way to wrap up. Bury those issues, boys!

* * *

On that note, the world is still intact, if now a little more rightfully frightened of Dean Winchester, 212 episodes to go, and this is probably one of the more depressing Destiel episodes from the early seasons.

Sam’s friends are probably pretty glad to be rid of him by now though. I wonder what would happen if he tried sending Becky a Christmas card addressed from the Bunker?


	7. 1x07

The first season is starting to feel like an AU where Sam and Dean are normal brothers who went on a camping trip in the woods and just told each other dumb stories late at night, and we’re sort of seeing a dramatisation of the stories; at the end of each episode the camera cuts out and Sam is holding a torch under his face and Dean is cursing because the marshmallow he was cooking on the fire just melted off the stick.

Then Sam took it too far and made it weird with the Jess thing and Dean got super uncomfortable and now they don’t go camping any more.

* * *

Actually remember when I joked about the Dead in the Water girl getting in trouble with ghosts for wasted bath water and the Bloody Mary first victim getting in trouble for obsessively collecting mirrors? This story is literally a manifestation of that sort of morality tale upfront.

~~themes~~

* * *

Hm we have a parallel to last episode where Sam convinced Dean off screen (or rather from Dean’s side was off-screen) to go investigate his friend’s case (and I joked it was the puppy dog eyes in action): this time Dean just says “Dad would have checked it out” and it cuts to the Impala zooming merrily along implying this was the line that was needed to finally convince Sam (PS: I appreciate this first season scenery porn SO MUCH I can’t even believe how much there is and it makes my heart swell :P).

I am curious though about this subtle parallel and the unspoken motivations going on here though. Dean goes along with Sam’s thing last episode because he’s keeping Sam on his side and acquiescing to him sometimes means in the long term a stronger relationship. Dean’s scared to be alone (established last episode in the text with “everyone always leaves” and so we have it as canon that Dean does not want to be alone) and basically collected Sam for the emotional support as much as the help. He’s also consistently arguing with Sam about not rushing off to find John but to do the cases along the way, so agreeing to him was a sort of way to insist like there’s no double standard of “we only do the things I want.” There’s a lot of subtle policing of Sam’s behaviour going on in these discussions.

Getting Sam to go along on irrelevant cases is more complicated. I mused that Dean is making Sam do these cases in part to keep him in line and stop him turning into John. There’s another episode coming up (I have no idea what one yet, sorry - that’s why there’s a rewatch :P) where John phones them with some case and Sam argues with him and then Dean snatches the phone and immediately snaps into Good Soldier mode, so we know “John would have” is much more complicated for Sam than this scene transition indicates. Perhaps some of it is the ideal vs the man: in this case Dean is invoking John as a sort of abstract morality force, while when they have the real thing on the line there are more complicated questions that need addressing for Sam.

I’ve also discussed John ditching out of the “good” side of being a hunter - abandoning the “saving people” side for the pure “hunting things” track he’s now on. Dean has technically inherited the abandoned family business (I got a t-shirt for Christmas which is ironically “Winchester & sons” because you can’t just tell your non-fandom relations how problematic John Winchester is over dinner :P) so while Dean says that invoking John, it’s an outdated notion of what John would have done  _himself_  (he left them to do cases he abandoned in 1x01 and presumably 1x02) but if we look at Dean taking on the mantle of the job John left behind, it’s sort of him doing just that without realising it, and a suggestion of him filling the abandoned role. 

* * *

I am amused by Dean’s “he’s the artist” comment in the purple guy scene because of how canon directly contradicts this. 

Yes I completely derailed my rewatch to find that in my Sam tag, I’m not apologising, it’s legit the best thing in the show. :P THE LIL STICK FIGURE WOLF I MEAN COME ON. (but this is for a later rewatch. Moving on.)

* * *

Okay, so Sam n Dean go into the church for the funeral of victim no.1 and the purple guy painting scene makes you think this is going to be another pervy Dean moment (which are like… every episode and this is the episode with his glee over college girls which is… much less gross than 10x13 at least…) since purple guy gets Dean’s attention by talking about Lori all pervy “hurr hurr reverend’s daughter” but when we actually get there Sam’s the one who makes a long eye-contact with her and Dean isn’t even included in that moment. Which is nice just for  _not_  immediately making it another gross moment right then. (At a  _funeral_. Maybe even season 1 Dean has his limits :P)

Anyway then the reverend asks everyone to pray and Sam bows his head right away and Dean sits there facing forward and needs a nudge from Sam to bow his head as well. At this point in canon it just looks like him being unaware (despite how he wasn’t the one looking at Lori) or just kind of… casually not inclined to pray, but… Argh, this is a wonderful 1 second introduction to Sam and Dean vs faith. They get asked to pray and Sam just does it unquestioningly without even really knowing anything about the guy they’re praying for. And we know this is foreshadowing for Dean’s ongoing issues with the whole thing.

(Also my shipper heart is sobbing because of just how  _ingrained_  not-praying was in Dean’s mentality before Cas. UGH)

100 points for blink and you miss it characterisation that holds true for the entire extended emotional arcs of these characters. Bravo.

* * *

TBH I kinda ship Lori and her friend right now because she’s so supportive and also encouraged Lori to wear hotter clothes and really appreciated it, but that makes it super tragic because we know she gets killed by the ghost for sexual promiscuity and if there was an element of queer guilt/shame in there from Lori’s end, ugh. :P So probably let’s just edge right around this one.

* * *

The focus on meeting Lori favours Sam over Dean, bonding with her over people dying horribly in front of them. [welcome–to–awkwardville](http://tmblr.co/mf4M6zzYHBBds6ET4AADySQ) wrote [a really cool bit](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120143287303/sam-and-deans-ethical-codes) on Sam n Dean’s morality with a mention of this episode that I just read last night (Argh I am going to take forever to finish watching this if I keep wandering off into my blog :P) so I suppose this focus on Lori and Sam is part of how they ended up linked with her as a mirror to him.

Lori says how the police have dismissed her story as her being so scared she was seeing things. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” Sam replies. This is about his psychic thing, obviously, since that’s his main arc, but I’m weirdly reminded of Metatron - uh, sorry, “Gabriel”, saying “none of it was real but all of it was true.” It’s strange phrasing from Sam: it’s meant to imply of course that if it was “just” her seeing things there’s some validity to that because of course he’s hung up on Jess and those visions still so he is contemplating this angle. But I like that the theme of storytelling and perception of reality etc is sneaking in here in a very low-key way which you’d only really notice thanks to a million years down the line similar phrasing used in a much more overt context…

* * *

Meanwhile Dean makes an insincere compliment about the sermon to butter her dad up and he says how nice it is to find people receptive to the Lord’s word and Dean does his “heh okay no” laugh to himself and he splits up and goes with the priest to buy Lori and Sam some time.

* * *

And theeen Dean makes it about Lori being hot.

Does “every urban legend have a source” count in the same way as “every culture in the world has lore on…”?

* * *

“Get this”! *takes a shot*

(Of coffee.)

* * *

… Oh my GOD. Queer!Lori and her roomie is canon. 

(dad) “I worry about you.”  
(Lori) “There’s 22 girls in there, I’m perfectly safe…”  
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about. You don’t think I know what goes on in there?”  
“Dad do we have to have this argument again? I’m over 18, I can live my own life.”  
“Which means drinking, partying with that roommate of yours.” [no mention of sex with boys]  
“I’m an adult. I can take care of myself. Goodnight.” *Lori storms off with her dad calling after her*

I’m just saying, if he wasn’t worried about dudes but he was worried about the influence Lori’s roomie had on her AND the fact that he linked girls with trouble and linked it to the roomie in particular… I mean obviously it’s all subtextual since she was trying to go on a date with a dude in the cold open and ~obviously~ that makes her straight *hurts self eye rolling*, but that conversation, man. Look at it with certain goggles and it’ll floor you.

So. The poor roomie died because Lori had a crush on her and her dad knew and disapproved of her queerness. :<

* * *

Hahaha there’s an Avril Lavigne poster in one girl’s room in the dorm. Oh 2005.

* * *

She’s called Taylor, and this is the sweet smile Lori makes when she comes through the door and sees Taylor “sleeping”.

Argh fucking subtextual tragic queers. Aaargh. It’s the worst trope and I’m emotionally compromised by it anyway against my better judgement.

* * *

*rewinds to pay attention to Taylor and Lori*

“It’s just us girls,” Taylor says, inviting Lori to hang out and drink tequila and watch Reality Bites. What do you bet all the other girls don’t come because oops they all cancelled at the last minute, I guess it’s just us then, Lori? 

I am honestly just tormenting myself here.

  


They’re so cute and fun! AU where no one got murdered and they just drank a lot of tequila and made out all night.

* * *

Anyway back to the grimness.

* * *

Okay no wait one more think before I have to face up to Taylor being dead. LOOK HOW CUTE THEIR DOOR IS.

Aw maaan. Okay. *sigh*

* * *

Dean and Sam (oh yeah those guys) talk about Dean inventing the rocksalt rounds and Dean’s all “You don’t have to be a college graduate to be a genius” so I guess either at this point he’s owning it and getting one up on Sam for those times he openly doubted it, OR more likely the “you and Dad” Sam linked to the ammo means Dean is mostly talking up John here and letting his own participation in this invention slide. I don’t even know. It seems actually kind of out of character for Dean to just own it. :P

* * *

Oh Taylor is still alive at least while Lori was awake and brushing her teeth and stuff. HONESTLY I thought she was dead the whole time and that makes it slightly less horrifying for once.

ESPECIALLY with the ghost hiding behind the door like a kid playing hide and seek. It’s just this side of ridiculous. 

The actress who plays Lori has to do so much screaming.

* * *

Dean getting Sam out of trouble with the police by using the truth creatively is another point in favour in the column of the muddy area between truth and lies being good… In fact is this the first real positive creative truth manipulation? I can’t remember the tally in favour of each so far.

* * *

Poor Lori looks so much more upset by this death than her dumb date anyway.

* * *

I can  _not_  believe that Sam and Dean are professionals and that is all I will say on them breaking and entering.

* * *

As well as hiding behind doors, the ghost is pretty silly because he signs his work.

* * *

“Get this.” *takes a shot*

* * *

Aw Dean wandering around in the dark looking like a startled rabbit. *just wants to protect him*

* * *

Aw Dean digging graves. Which I maintain that and running from things is about the only exercise he  _actually_  gets.

* * *

Sam and Lori bonding over everyone around them dying. (Another point for being honest: Sam upfront said that he was keeping an eye on her in a sort of protective way and even though she made a point of telling him it was weird, she still opens up to him, so… Lori might have issues but thematically it works?)

* * *

Aw sweaty Dean playing with fire.

* * *

They talk about Lori having repressed emotions and then chalk Taylor up to “tries to turn her into a party girl”. Hmm. >.>

* * *

I am so proud of how much research they’ve been doing this episode. My non-Destiel OTP for Dean is Dean x books. (It’s Cas x coffee on the other side but I think it only happened once so I am a lot more satisfied with Dean x books. :P)

* * *

Hm, this picture looks a thousand words I’m too tired to come up with, although getting weird Dean n Death feels.

* * *

Aargh, Lori talking about avenging angels. Sam’s like “trust me this guy is no angel.” Aw maaan. He’s going to have much better data for comparison one day.

* * *

The hook man smashing through two different doors reminds me of demon!Dean in 10x03 (well I mean that in itself was an homage to the Shining). But hey, let’s start Sam vs Doors 10 seasons early.

* * *

Huh the cross has its own weird hook shape.

Is that just because of the hook theme or is there some real symbolism there? (Or perhaps both)

* * *

I like the ghost death here… The first burning death. I suppose they burn most ghosts now but are there any others aside from the couple that moved on peacefully that had different disappearing effects based on how they were destroyed?

* * *

Aww poor Sam saying goodbye to Lori. Dean offers that they could stay for him to spend more time with her even though he just told the policeman they’d leave town and never come back… There’s an empty offer if there ever was one. His sad face as he watches Sam say goodbye. :< Sam’s sad face as he says goodbye. :<

Bummer ending, aside from the ghost being dead really.

* * *

211 episodes left to go. This episode had some really nice background Cas and Destiel build up so I’ll give it a few more points than normal. World is still intact, Winchesters are taking some hard knocks… Soon the sparkly eyes will be gone and I am beginning to dread it.


	8. 1x08

Or: oh god you actually expect me to rewatch Bugs?

* * *

*just sticks it on in the background*

* * *

They’re getting a few more monsters to put into the Previously but the basic shape hasn’t changed much. My patience with “Saving people hunting things” “Dad’s single most valuable possession” is getting thin.

* * *

My uncle used to build houses out in the desert and took us on this great tour of the half-built neighbourhood he was working on at the time. It looked nothing like this one. 

* * *

Dean was hustling pool off-screen which means at some point in this episode we can assume a reasonable approximation of this occurred:

([x](http://acklesjensen.tumblr.com/post/115289140398/10x17-inside-man)) But with season 1 Dean in the leather jacket. Hold me.

* * *

One of my other uncles lives out in this massive wilderness out in the desert which was bought to turn into houses like this but then it didn’t go through and it was bought by a ton of different people as investment and stuff or to build their houses on under their own power, and basically no one did, so he lives basically in the middle of the desert in this amazing house with no neighbours, but a full complicated road plan. It’s the actual dream.

There are a fair few bugs out there though.

* * *

When we went up in the mountains near the neighbourhood that was never built, I wanted to go see a lizard that was on a rock and almost fell in a sinkhole. Lots of mines out in the hills. It wasn’t quite so perfectly round as this hole, but there’s a plausible explanation for how flawlessly round that hole is.

* * *

The passenger side window on the Impala is all weird:

I know windows got smashed in the Pilot but nothing bad happened to the car since then, right? Did Dean drive around with a shitty temporary window all this time? I swear it didn’t look like that last time we had inside shots. I am concerned. If like later meta proves, the Impala is basically Dean’s soul, the windows to it are getting messed up. I ended my last rewatch concerned the really cute sparkly eyes that characterise season 1 were on their way out since things were going to get depressing soon, so perhaps this is foreshadowing.

* * *

Wasn’t Dean working in construction in 6x01? He would have been building houses like this. Also having someone to come home to and say hello honey how was your day. Excuse me Bugs is making me sob over Dean and Lisa.

* * *

Sam’s comment about John getting old and them moving to the neighbourhood for him to retire might fit in with the stuff I was writing about them sort of inheriting the family business from him. A sign that John has actually metaphorically retired from the “saving people” thing.

* * *

Aw Samandriel was hired for this episode for looking like a smaller cuter Sam. And obviously angels are important for paralleling with the boys about daddy issues.

* * *

“Bow hunting is an important skill.” Have we literally  _ever_  seen them bow hunting? We had Artemis with a bow in season 8 and Dean nicked some of the arrows she left behind for important Destiel subtext in 8x23.

* * *

“Get this” *takes a shot*

* * *

They just talked about having psychic connections to animals for some reason, specifically dogs.

I can  _not_  believe that Bugs foreshadows Dog Dean Afternoon more than anything else in the series. I was only  _joking_  in Skin about them interviewing the dog.

* * *

*goes to fix a chip in my nail polish over the shower scene and renders self unable to type*

* * *

First time I watched this I legit assumed Samandriel was the one killing everyone thanks to his spidermancy powers. (Hm, I meant that “mancy” as in like necromancy or whatever, but it blurs with “spiderman” and now I am confused).

* * *

Where did they even get the umbrellas?

* * *

Apparently Samandriel is called “Matt” here. MMHM. Anything you say. (For the record I’m probably not have similar issues with not-Benny the vampire next season because that is a better more serious episode :P)

* * *

One of the other things about my uncle’s awesome desert house is that it actually does have so much space because it’s out in the middle of nowhere that it has three huge bathrooms with massive power showers. I have never had a better shower than out in the desert. It’s definitely the most plausible part of the episode.

* * *

I mis-heard Dean saying about Matt and Sam “you two are like bees in a pod” and to be honest this episode would be massively improved if every line was a pun about bugs.

* * *

That grave has another sink hole and the top layer was literally just a lid of worms. It’s not the most structurally sound building material.

* * *

Hey Sam’s driving this time.

* * *

This conversation about John is more interesting than most of the episode, although it’s mostly just about really painfully underlining how terrible their family situation actually is. I guess this is all the subtext from earlier bubbling over. 

* * *

I am  _pretty sure_  Sam and Dean stood there having a conversation so long it got dark, so I am ASSUMING Bugs time actually runs really fast in general.

Exhibit A:

Impala with the wing mirrors helpfully tucked in pulling up in broad daylight.

Exhibit B, exactly one heartfelt conversation (which clocks in at about a minute and a half according to my DVD program) later:

What I am getting from this is that Bugs actually has a remarkable internal consistency where time moves about 1000 times faster than time normally does, but only environmentally. Honestly they should have investigated why days were only 10 minutes long rather than the curse.

* * *

Welp this also has a very on the nose thing about lying not benefiting them and telling the truth being the correct way to do stuff. It’s definitely an on-going theme anyway.

* * *

Heh. “You don’t break a curse. You get out of its way.”

This is probably not the BEST advice for season 10 but the first part at least is pretty usefully applicable. Sam should have remembered Bugs when thinking about lifting the Mark of Cain. He’s not to be blamed really though - no one willingly remembers Bugs.

* * *

So was this the only family that lived out there? They’re like my uncle in his wilderness except the wilderness is other empty houses instead of desert. It’s a weird commentary on my uncle’s lives. 

* * *

“Under no circumstances tell him the truth.” Dean immediately defends lying despite the warning he had about it. Oh look and Samandriel told the truth and it didn’t work. It’s described as a Biblical swarm. Samandriel definitely busted out his angelic knowledge to try describing the intense peril they were in at some point.

* * *

This episode could have been solved with a GIANT one of those bug zapper lanterns.

* * *

I suppose the upside is this night is so short I don’t have to sit here and watch like 4 hours of them waiting out the bugs.

* * *

Imagine if they decided to have some good old nostalgia in season 11 and revisit one of the show’s greatest hits, and the Darkness was a cloud of angry bugs? You heard it here first.

* * *

I like how the termites gnawed an almost perfectly round hole to let the bees in.

* * *

Somewhere, Chuck had a weird fever dream about this and was compelled to write this all down.

Or perhaps this one didn’t make it into the Winchester Gospels canon because he really did just think  _this_  one was a step too far and he had clearly just eaten some really shitty food the night before.

* * *

Even the ending feels kind of false where the crappy dad decides that it was all worth it because he bonded with his son and learned the True Meaning Of Family.

(spoiler alert: he runs away from home, changes his name to Alfie while laying low, and works in Weiner Hut for a few years before his life gets  _even worse_.)

* * *

210 to go and none of them are Bugs. This is a tiny silver lining.

I’m glad Cas wasn’t in this episode.


	9. 1x09

Or: in which Lizzy belatedly realises the trend of episode 9 of a season being a game-changing plot episode started right at the beginning.

Except for season 6 where 6x09 was the fairy episode.

We don’t talk about season 6.

* * *

I still get chills when I see the words “Lawrence Kansas” at the bottom of the screen.

They could troll us and set an episode there which was just your average MotW and Sam n Dean never mention that it was where they used to live and as long as they put Lawrence Kansas at the bottom of the screen I’d be drowning in Winchester feels.

Discussion: since they chillax in Lebanon and often hang out in the general vicinity of Kansas way more than they used to thanks to that, why  _haven’t_  they accidentally had to return to Lawrence any time recently?

* * *

This is another one of those episodes where you forget just how genuinely scary season 1 was. Just like, kid upstairs with the chair in front of the closet door slowly sliding away, mum having a jump scare with the wonky light fitting downstairs…

* * *

Sam drawing the tree over and over: has he done a page a day every time he has the dream or has he just drawn the same tree 6 times immediately after awakening as a way of enforcing to himself what it looked like? Because you can alter your own memory pretty quickly by doing that and end up drawing a tree that looks  _nothing like_  the one in your dream. I’m just saying.

* * *

At this point the power imbalance with who deciding where they go is back: in Bugs Sam was the one who picked the case apparently as a distraction for himself while Dean hustled pool and there wasn’t much tension over whether they should do it or not since Sam was the one presenting the case (and Dean has a pro-random-monster-hunting stance) and there were no odd strings attached like in Skin: the plot just needed one of them to find the case. It was used for character/world building more on Dean, with Sam as a counterpoint doing the “nice” side of the job to demonstrating Dean doing the shady pool hustling side: that demonstration of a different aspect of their lives (to show how not-normal the Winchesters were before putting them in the model neighbourhood) meant a break from the subtext of this ongoing argument.

Here Dean has been looking for stuff online while Sam was asleep, and despite how that is very background to the case Sam is about to spring on Dean (shaping where they go yet again), it seems to be something they just agree on now that they’re doing these cases while they wait for a lead on John, hence Dean looking and casually talking about where they might go next on their great Find Dad Roadtrip like Sam isn’t going to object. Unless he just assumes talking about it like this is the way to get Sam to go along by making it sound like the decision they’re doing it is already made and giving him the false choice between ghost ships and mutilated cattle. (Dean is such a good bro. :P) Perhaps leaving Sam to find a case previously was again a sign of giving him some agency despite the fact it’s agency within doing the thing he doesn’t actually want to be doing.

“Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?” Again, Dean subtly putting moral pressure on Sam about the fact that what they do is important. There’s an emphasis on the hunting side, with the “evil” thrown in to remind Sam where the morality is, but not a mention of the saving people side. It could be a calculated attack on Sam’s indifference based on the fact that he’s so far been driven and distracted by wanting to cut to the chase so if Dean is expecting him to rebel again (in this case Dean = John (or, Dean’s surface reading of him minus the “obsessed bastard” side he eventually admits to later) in the family business, rather than the normal casting of him in the mother role to Sam which everyone’s talked about loads hence me looking at him as the dad instead this re-watch :P), he’s expecting that words emphasising everything they do is violently hunting stuff for the greater good to be what appeals to Sam. Compare to Wendigo where the emphasis that brought Sam around was on “saving people” - we’re getting close to their first big bust up over this as Sam slides towards not being able to wait for revenge.

* * *

I really like this lamp, and since it’s season 1 I am not worried about its safety either. It’s relaxing not having that source of stress.

* * *

Also Dean is eating left over Chinese take out for breakfast, and there’s the ongoing Dean and coffee thing - this season it’s as reliable as Dean and hard liquor in later seasons.

* * *

Okay they are definitely either being haunted by this bedspread or staying in a chain of motels with a ton of superficial differences but always a return to these covers:

There are diamond-themed partitions in this room. I wonder, since the other episode was Phantom Traveller, if this is part of the sneaky background subtext for demon or demon-adjacent episodes? I’ll keep an eye out for more diamonds.

PS: I know Sam is drawing from his dream so it may count as sort of automatic writing instead, but does this counteract his canon drawing ability?

You know what just for lols? I’m going to link this AGAIN just to compare. :P

* * *

I appreciate that the motel stationery has a fake 555 number on it.

* * *

“That’s where it all started! It has to mean something, right?” 

\- Rivers and sources. AU where to cure the Mark of Cain they went and bought that house and spent season 10 doing it up. Cas showed up with a sockmonkey for Dean as a housewarming gift. Probably, like, another waffle iron for Sam because he wasn’t sure what to get him and used Dean as a bad role model.

* * *

Oh, Dean swore he would never go back there. Never mind, AU cancelled.

* * *

But seriously (tragically) you have to recall him waltzing into Sam’s life in 1x01 playing a recording of Constance saying “never go hooome”. At the  _time_  it was the moment the fates converged to ruin Sam’s life, but as a longer theme it applies to the both of them and for Dean it’s just that much more tragic, especially since he  _remembers_  home (and his old sockmonkey). For Sam it was a symbol of his  _current_  problems and an ongoing warning that he couldn’t settle into the normal life he wanted. For Dean, it’s all about past trauma and what he has buried in himself: he can’t go home because he can’t face these memories.

Dean’s reaction to Sam’s reveal is entirely about how it affects him: obviously he’s concerned for Sam, but the words out of his mouth are are about how Sam’s truth bomb staggered him and then Sam emotionally compromised him further by insisting they go home. Basically, Dean’s trauma is overwhelming to the point he sort of fails at being a supportive brother here.

* * *

I think this maaay be the truth theme coming to a head since Sam’s been keeping a secret this whole time. He says to Dean to trust him, but Dean refuses to budge until Sam explains. It doesn’t exactly take much back and forth - I think Sam has been busting to say it for a while. He  _may_  have done in Bloody Mary, or at least around then he was getting ready to explain it hence telling Dean he  _had_  a secret in the first place (and that’s such a childlike thing to do - announce you have a secret but then refuse to elaborate on what it is, while we’re collecting points for Sam sort of being Dean’s kid here), but then that episode enforced the idea that holding onto a secret wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Sam used it as a weapon against Mary. 

* * *

Sam’s appeal to Dean is about the saving people side of things - it was the vision of the woman in trouble which spurred him onto it - but he mentions it might be a lead on their main plotline, and so his motivation is blurred further by the dialogue to show it’s not just  _purely_  a  saving people viewpoint.

Interesting this case doesn’t have anything to do with the demon plotline as far as I remember - it’s all just Mary and the poltergeist, which means that as Sam’s powers are awakening they are attuned to more than just the demon activity, but powerful spiritual stuff connected to him personally as well - just I suppose there are no other instances where this would actually happen?

* * *

Further to Dean’s automatic selfish response in relation to this, Sam asks as they pull up outside if Dean is going to be okay facing this. Sam has noticed and acknowledges that this is harder for Dean, at least: I don’t think that selfish response is going to be begrudged since Sam apparently gets it.

* * *

Dean tries lying about them being federal something or other, but Sam cuts right in with the truth, and it’s the magic password since she just found those photos of them.

* * *

Is there a terrible dark parallel between the clapping monkey toy and Dean’s sockmonkey? There’s probably a terrible dark parallel.

* * *

Ugh Dean’s face when she says “I’m sure you have lots of happy childhood memories here.”

(I’m pretty sure that’s also the plaid that Dean was wearing when Sam died in season 2)

* * *

Aw maaan Sam finding out that Dean carried him out the house.

* * *

“And [John] had a theory about what did it?” “If he did he kept it to himself.”

Ah another point to his A+ handling of the situation. Okay, so you don’t traumatise children by telling them a demon probably killed their mother, but especially later when Dean was hunting with him theoretically getting treated like an adult, John could have at least shared some note. Instead, the “saving people” side vs the “hunting one particular thing” side were completely boxed off from each other and John never let them in - which affects their own safety and mental well-being.

I can’t remember what Missouri said about it (we’ll get there :P) but I seem to recall she knew about Sam’s psychic thing? Or at least it was implied? She talks to John at the end of this episode, doesn’t she? I can’t remember about what except that it was used to show John was there the whole time and didn’t step in.

Even without that, from last episode we have Dean saying to Sam about how John used to swing by regularly to check on Sam without making contact: Dean used it as a sign that John cared about Sam altruistically, but even just that combined with what John said on his deathbed suggests that he may have been checking up just for plot reasons.

* * *

Dean’s freckles are ridiculous and he’s so sad while he leaves this message for John but the  _freckles_.

* * *

Dean’s like “I don’t know what to do” after all that advice to Sam about how they just go about this like a normal case. I want to write something about this but it’s so emotionally compromising  _I_  don’t know what to do.

* * *

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbal-banging_monkey_toy](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCymbal-banging_monkey_toy&t=MWZhM2JjNTE2MDc4NDc1YWViNjQ3ZDBiZjVlZDJlNGE4MmUyOWJjZSxzUmxGcXNzZQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F120274967043%2Fspn-hellatus-rewatch-1x09-or-in-which-lizzy&m=1)

I honestly went and looked these up because they’re so creepy and Wikipedia just casually points out that yes they are very creepy and often used in horror and it doesn’t go any deeper than that. There is no mentioned  _real life_  case of them being involved in something spooktastic, even only allegedly.

Home is on the list there! Also I like that the first on the list is a James Dean movie.

* * *

I do wonder about the journal since we know from season 8 it was Henry’s and it would have been John’s property all his life anyway UNTIL he started writing in it - Dean shows us that it was the first page that he was writing about meeting Missouri for the first time, so he obviously started using it specifically for this purpose…

I wonder if perhaps it was in a box of something that got saved from the house after the fire and finding it again (I suppose as well if a lot of their belongings had been lost so this was one of the few things that made it) and that inspired John to start writing in it. All a massive coincidence that what was meant to be a MoL journal became a hunter’s journal instead…

* * *

Missouri! \o/ 

It’s kinda sad we don’t have more psychics. They’re fun. :P Basically just her and Pamela, right? (also cartoon guy).

* * *

Missouri says how everything has been quiet and she’s been keeping an eye on the house just to make sure of that: Sam goes on about how all the recent events feel like something is  _starting_.

I do think it’s really interesting that in-universe the books have just started to be written about them, and the narrative starts when they come back together for the first time in a couple of years. Sam can sort of feel that something’s up; that the story has started around them. This is all such small potatoes but the universe is  _watching_  them.

* * *

I would strongly advise that tiny human  _not_  to climb into the fridge.

Welp. They never listen, do they?

* * *

Ugh the way Sam n Dean’s eyes go up when Missouri says that they’re in the old nursery.

* * *

When she talks about real evil leaving old wounds I can’t help thinking about how demons have lost a lot of this kind of uncanny oomph they used to have when we never saw them and they speak about them in whispers. One demon like Yellow Eyes screwed up the entire house for decades: especially in season 2 they track demons by the phenomena they leave behind like altering weather patterns and causing cattle death just by  _being_  there.

You do kind of sit here thinking about demon!Dean and how much of this applied to him. Or if they screw up the weather in times of repeated Crowley-summoning.

Maybe that’s why the windows of the Impala are always wet when they’re driving…

* * *

Sam’s just watching Dean make these hexbags to purify the house. Very helpful, Sam.

* * *

The rest of this episode is all just emotional whammy. :<

* * *

Uhoh, the lamp is coming for Sam.

Dean’s the one who smashes all of your brethren in season 10, lampy. This is really uncalled for. 

Maybe all the lamp smashing is Dean getting revenge for the lamp trying to kill Sam. He comes running in to save him after all, and Dean never forgives and never forgets.  _Welcome to next time_  he says, throwing yet another lamp to the floor. He will destroy the whole bloodline if he has to.

* * *

Heh, Sam’s like we’ll pay for this and Dean does one affronted face, then Missouri is like Dean will clean this up and Dean’s  _excuse me_  goes through the roof. :P I love these little moments.

* * *

Did Sam make Mary manifest properly by saying he knew who it was? I think Sam did that. Aw Maaaaary. This is the latest chronological time she ever sees them, even though they got her actress back for various hallucinations and imitations. And that kills me so much. This is her saying goodbye to them forever  _in the first half of season 1_.

* * *

I wonder if these photos they got from the house include the ones from season 10?

* * *

“Don’t you boys be strangers!” “We won’t!” *they drive off and literally never see Missouri again.

I’m gonna interpret her last look as her  _knowing_  that even though the show didn’t. :P

* * *

Hey John. So he definitely knew Sam had powers this early on… I can’t remember how it came across later.

Missouri threatens to slap him for not going to talk to them. Yeah Missouri. Yeeeah.

Since it cuts to black not long after that I’m gonna assume she gave him at least one slap even if it ultimately didn’t achieve anything. (She’d know it wouldn’t but she might find it satisfying anyway. :P)

* * *

209 left to go. I have to wonder if John disappeared for 9 episodes just to grow the scruff for this episode. 

The world is still intact, although Sam seems dimly aware of the way destiny is creeping around them in a way that is  _pretty ominous_  for the sake of the planet.

Everyone cried this episode. Probably Cas too off-screen when Mary showed up in Heaven. They chillaxed in a happy heaven with baby Sam and lil 4 year old Dean running obliviously around the garden. Mary made Cas ice tea and they just sat together for a long time. She didn’t need to say the thing about him watching over her boys. He already knew.


	10. 1x10

…

I literally have nothing to say about people who voluntarily go chill in a famously haunted abandoned hospital at night.

* * *

I like the graffiti in here! 

I got side-tracked about things being the window to the soul while watching Bugs and now I’m really distracted by it here. :P Does it mean  _this_  window in particular because it’s clouded and dirty and covered in scribbles? Maybe a commentary on all the twisted spirits we’re about to encounter? Hm.

* * *

The cop being “wtf” about the kids actually going to all the trouble of bringing bolt cutters so they could go into the even  _scarier_  wing of the asylum is exactly what my next comment would have been, so I’m just going to let this guy write my commentary for me instead. I’m only 25 and I’m too old for this crap. :P

* * *

Hm, the other cop who was made violent seemed to have fought with his wife before, so him killing her actually was personally motivated - I suppose they put that in so it reflects on Sam and Dean at the end - he didn’t just immediately attack his partner or anything when he came out the asylum. [bold-sartorial-statement](http://tmblr.co/mZjQXe7MZQpSZEnLadO3Mbg) commented on my Skin rewatch about this episode: <http://bold-sartorial-statement.tumblr.com/post/120142142473/elizabethrobertajones-spn-hellatus-rewatch> 

I’m definitely not saying this was great or anything, but I suppose if they were shown to be fighting and she could hardly tell his rage state from normal then things weren’t great at home… Though if your comment was about how it was handled after this (I haven’t moved past the cold open yet) then there might be more apologising for him in the narrative. Does it make it any better if we know the truth of it so we can say that any attempt to say they she was happy seems right? At least right here in the cold open it doesn’t seem to be presented completely uncritically like this was a happy marriage and he “just snapped”, with her acting loving or unaware he could be angry even as his normal self before she dies or anything like that.

(And also: this puts a parallel between Sam and Dean and a subtextually abusive relationship. Hm.)

(I wonder how much of this was meant to be in there and how much is unfortunate implications.)

Moving on before this gets wildly grim.

* * *

This is an  _extremely_  red motel room and Dean is blending in perfectly with it:

That’s also another very nice lamp in the background.

Aside from the bacon room in Dead in the Water this may be one of the first overtly thematic motel rooms we’ve seen (who knows what the bacon theme was about). Sam in blue stands out starkly, surrounded by the red-ness, which, with Dean bleeding into it, does seem to make him completely engulfed in Dean’s world at this point. So it might be the first overtly  _relevantly_  themed rooms we’ve seen. The walls have a cracked motif as if to suggest the upcoming cracking between them, since they’re going to be made to fight this episode.

* * *

Dean makes a note in his [motel journal](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/107221439393/7-14-plucky-pennywhistles-magical-menagerie) that when he walked into the room and saw how red it was he looked it up and down and thought to himself, “Well, one of us has to change.”

* * *

*realises I’m about to listen to another iteration of the brother fight of the season about finding John* *pauses to go to bed* I’m too old for this. :P 

* * *

Morning!

* * *

So, John’s message arriving in the middle of this moment where they are already fighting where Sam is chasing up John and getting his hackles up about Dean not appearing to care as much. Sam brings up that Dean called John and got nothing.  _We_  saw that phonecall from Dean’s end, with much shedding of manly tears, so it’s pretty easy to assume this is a case where Sam does NOT know the full emotional side from Dean’s end. Dean’s repressed attitude in this fight is linked to that: we remember his helpless phonecall, and know he’s tamping down his emotions on the matter.

It’s interesting because Dean does seem to be  _helping_  i.e. re-reading John’s journal for more clues (since they were turned onto the Wendigo case from the journal) but not  _enough_  for Sam. They’re both in search-for-Dad mode but Sam is willing to go to further extremes than Dean (put out an official search) while Dean thinks it can be solved on their own - private - terms.

* * *

Dramatic zoom onto the text message!

* * *

Dean cottons on immediately it’s a case - seeing as he already memorised the journal this early on in the game - and just cheerfully starts explaining it to Sam. New orders have come in, and the good little soldier knows exactly what to do with them. Life was briefly complicated, then this happened, and now it isn’t. “He wants us there, it’s good enough for me.” “Dad’s telling us to go somewhere: we’re going.”

Seeing as I’ve been tracking all the ways it cuts from their conversation about the MotW to them driving to deal with it, I think this one is very interesting because instead of presenting the line (that last one I typed) and then just cutting to the car to show that it was heeded, the camera takes a moment to hover on Sam looking practically tearful with frustration, and  _then_  the cut to the car rolling into town; it gives us that moment of building regret and indecision from Sam about constantly following along when Dean snaps to John’s orders or carries on pushing them onto cases because it’s what they’re  _supposed_  to do. Now we’re actually seeing Sam getting ready to rebel.

* * *

Aah, my sensible cop friend! He is wearing a battered brown leather jacket while off-duty. Dean  _isn’t_ wearing his. 

I wonder if there’s a subtle John-related thing here, just because of this costuming choice. Mostly because Daniel is an authority figure and coming right after a moment where Dean hastens to follow John’s orders, giving us a John parallel who is overtly someone in an authority role like that makes the point?

(Actually at this point do we even  _know_  the leather jacket is John’s? It’s so huge on Dean I can’t imagine they didn’t have that in mind the whole time even if the audience isn’t in the know yet.)

Anyway Dean harasses him for the story and Sam comes heroically busting in like “the man’s an officer, why don’t you show a little respect?!” before sitting down to actually get the story from Daniel. Again, assuming he’s a John parallel this is all sorts of interesting from Sam’s perspective, considering last time he was on screen he was tearing himself up inside about listening to order from the guy who is basically their commanding officer more than a father at this point. With Sam blatantly acting here (the kid CAN act!) it puts this as a very false role on him: subtract backwards to find someone who is being shown  _not_  to show respect to authority figures, i.e. exactly what we just saw bubbling under the surface in the last scene with the John suff.

If we go back to Bugs (which I speed-watched) we have this conversation between Sam n Dean regarding John and respect:

> DEAN  Yeah, so with that kid back there… why’d you tell him to just ditch his family like that?
> 
> SAM Just, uh… I know what the kid’s goin’ through.
> 
> DEAN How ‘bout tellin’ him to respect his old man, how’s that for advice?
> 
> SAM Dean, come on. (They stop walking.) This isn’t about his old man. You think I didn’t respect Dad. That’s what this is about.
> 
> DEAN Just forget it, all right? Sorry I brought it up.
> 
> SAM I respected him. But no matter what I did, it was never good enough.
> 
> DEAN So what are you sayin’? That Dad was disappointed in you?
> 
> SAM Was? Is. Always has been.
> 
> DEAN Why would you think that?
> 
> SAM Because I didn’t wanna bowhunt or hustle pool - because I wanted to go to school and live my life, which, to our whacked-out family, made me the freak.
> 
> DEAN Yeah, you were kind of like the blonde chick in The Munsters.
> 
> SAM Dean, you know what most dads are when their kids score a full ride? Proud. Most dads don’t toss their kids out of the house.
> 
> DEAN I remember that fight. In fact, I seem to recall a few choice phrases comin’ out of your mouth.
> 
> SAM You know, truth is, when we finally do find Dad… I don’t know if he’s even gonna wanna see me.

* * *

One more point towards Theatre Kid Sam even if that was Jossed in 10x05: “I had to sell it in there. It’s method acting.” “Huh?” says Dean.

* * *

Ah, here’s the bit where Sam describes what Daniel said to Dean about the cold open guy (Walter I think he said?) being in a reasonably happy marriage - “He and his wife had a few fights, like everybody.” Sam’s getting this second-hand from a guy mourning his dead friend and then repeating basically just what was said: with nothing from Daniel on-screen to show us any subtlety we’re like 3 steps removed from the family’s private lives and the woman’s voice in the story. Hrm.

* * *

Ah this is the episode with the epic flip from cheerleader!Dean over the high fence. (The shot starts with Sam dropping down from the fence some I’m guessing Jared couldn’t do it nicely, and they let him in, closed the gate, and let him pretend to be climbing over before Jensen showed him how it’s done. :P)

* * *

There’s a nice shot with them behind a barred window: a billion years before all the prison imagery really latched onto them as far as I know, but interesting to see it here.

* * *

Sam’s psychic stuff is discussed: he mentions getting strange vibes and Dean suggests the ghosts might latch onto him because of it even if Sam is sceptical (kind of like how in Lord of the Rings the bad stuff always went right for Frodo because he had the ring!)… Dean responds to Sam trying to dismiss the conversation with “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” which is interesting, putting a sort of nod to this being a queer narrative for Sam: the subtext always misses him by a million miles when it comes to character stuff where it all hits squarely on Dean, but at least down here in the first season Sam is keeping secrets about his identity and feeling other from his family (that “blonde kid from the Munsters” comment from the Bugs conversation) and other from society and stuff - if he  _had_  been a magnet for the queer reading on his character in the way Dean is, we’d probably never shut up about this. (I saw a comment in one of the re-watches of Bugs about Sam telling Matt “it gets better” but that they looked that up and that phrase took off  _after_  this, so that’s just accidental. In 8x01 Sam tells Kevin (a mirror of early seasons Sam) the same thing, and the meaning of the phrase gets lampshaded. Basically,  _nah_ for any developed queer subtext here. :P)

* * *

“This abandoned surgery room isn’t creepy enough.”

“No, it’s really not. What can we do about it?”

“Ohh let’s put this dirty headless doll on the table?”

“YES.”

The set designers I swear to god.

* * *

Okay I’m going to just go grab the whole transcript of this next conversation, I’m too lazy to type out all the bits I would want to talk about:

> SAM Dean. (DEAN looks at him) When are we going to talk about it?
> 
> DEAN Talk about what?
> 
> SAM About the fact Dad’s not here.
> 
> DEAN Oh. I see. How ’bout…never.
> 
> SAM I’m being serious, man. He sent us here…
> 
> DEAN So am I, Sam. Look, he sent us here, he obviously wants us here. We’ll pick up the search later.
> 
> SAM It doesn’t matter what he wants.
> 
> DEAN See. That attitude? Right there? That is why I always get the extra cookie.
> 
> SAM Dad could be in trouble, we should be looking for him. We deserve some answers, Dean. I mean, this is our family we’re talking about.
> 
> DEAN I understand that, Sam, but he’s given us an order. 
> 
> SAM So what, we gotta always follow Dad’s orders?
> 
> DEAN Of course we do. 
> 
> SAM gives DEAN a frustrated face. DEAN stares at him then turns away, ending the conversation.

Dean has been hoping a new case will distract Sam as they’ve done so far, but now Sam is imposing the John argument on him: I included the bookends of this conversation from the transcript as they show Dean turning to face into the argument and then turning away to call it closed.

Dean deflects and avoids “How about never” - trying to keep in control of the subject and stop Sam from asking questions. He emphasises with the line about always getting the cookie about how Sam is out of line - and how Dean being in line is a rewarding and better way. It doesn’t matter how well Dean’s been treated out of all this (see: previous episodes talking about how scared and messed up about being alone and how damaged he  _already_  is) he can’t see past disobeying, not when there are  _direct orders_  to follow. (It’s stuff like this where Cas later is paralleled with being literally  _programmed_  like a computer system into the same mindset, where you realise from Dean’s perspective how he can relate exactly to it anyway, and understand just how staggering it was that Cas rebelled for him - not because he gets how drastic it was for an angel to do it but because he  _knows_  that programming from his own POV.)

Sam’s anger about this attempt to control him is bubbling over: I don’t know how concerned he actually is for John’s safety as he literally just sent them fresh orders, and if that’s the case he’s in a position of at least enough luxury to decide what his sons should do next from afar (more instances of John being in a  _position_  where he knew of a hunt - and had past research for it in his journal making it an old responsibility of his - but then moved the responsibility of seeing it through onto the boys while he was on his revenge mission). Sam probably understands it as a distraction to keep them from finding John, highlighted in that discussion about what John wants: basically the fact he isn’t in town proving that he moved them somewhere deliberately not where he was. Dean upholding John’s orders and trying to shut down discussion that John isn’t there is another point towards Sam feeling like everyone is trying to stop him moving on with his desired revenge quest, and Dean’s blind faith in following John’s orders is the way in which John controls Sam from afar. 

* * *

Heh, Sam was reading a men’s health magazine - zoom ahead 10 seasons to Dean reading women’s magazine’s in the waiting room in 10x11.

* * *

Oh! The doctor he’s seeing is the son of the evil ghost. He’s in the SAME PROFESSION as the EVIL RAGE GHOST. Continuing the family business but in a healthy, safe way without going down the rage path. So the evil rage ghost is a John mirror and he puts all the rage into Sam’s brain. Subtle.

* * *

Some free psychiatry for Sam. This happens a lot to him. (I mean Dean goes through it with him once at least, but more of a pattern with Sam talking to psychiatrists like here or being institutionalised). 

Ellicott the younger asks Sam how he’s doing and Sam drops the same line about being on a road trip with his brother as he said he was using on his Stanford friends, then when asked if he’s enjoying it, grimaces a lot. Sam’s being made to act again. :P He’s ordered to talk honestly, bringing back that old theme of how Sam’s struggling with the truth, and surprise surprise we cut away before we can hear him say anything to Dean lurking around outside looking like 10 years older than normal. (We have a reference for that sort of look :P)

Sam was in there forever, so I’m guessing he unloaded everything.

* * *

And then we’re introduced to our next round of dumb kids who really shouldn’t be hanging out in an abandoned hospital after dark… The girl at least seems a little more sensible.

I’m kind of impressed the guy didn’t have a jump scare when he turned around and saw the ghost in the door because even though she looked like his girlfriend I would have peed myself even if that was my own mum.

* * *

Ahaha Sam n Dean are talking about seeing  _orbs_  on their little camera. ORBS YOU GUYS. Do you remember how when digital cameras were a new thing and suddenly everyone was taking too many photos in low light, there was a boom in ‘orbs’ as proof of ghosts? Aw man, little bit of paranormal history right here. :’) I guess at this point enough people have gone  _oh my god it’s just dust_  that there’s not so much of it around these days? I used to see orb photos everywhere on the internet back when. 

Funny how orbs correlate so strongly with abandoned empty places that haven’t been dusted in years :P

* * *

I hope a result of this hellatus rewatch is someone gifs Sam flipping that torch because that was needlessly cool flipping of a torch.

* * *

Aw man the “Ow you’re hurting my arm!” “What are you talking about?” moment will  _always_  spook me.

This is such a good ghost episode.

MOAR SCARY GHOSTS.

MOAR GHOSTS WITH COMPLICATED MOTIVES.

* * *

Heheh I like Kat. She’s like  _you face it_  when Sam tells her they need to communicate. 

Sassy in a time of panic is a good character even if she does nothing else. :P

* * *

Oh man, Kat asking if Dean is Sam’s boss. Sam just says no. Tiny microcosm of the argument going on :P

* * *

Dean being proud of himself when he finds the secret wall compartment with the doc’s briefcase in it: “That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” Except, uh, no one pays you, Dean. You have to steal all your money. But you go.

* * *

I can barely read the journal but it seems to repeat phrases about depression and delusions over and over beneath all the scary red and black squiggles.

* * *

First time a false call with Dean’s voice is used to mislead someone (off the top of my head: the call in 4x22 and Sam using it against Crowley in 10x22 - I wonder if it would be worth keeping a tally of this kind of thing. There’s also Dean sending fake text messages as Amelia in 8x09)

* * *

Do the boys  _genuinely_  not know yet that ghosts make torches die? My  _children_.

* * *

Actually, thinking of Sam’s season 7 stay in an institution, the Doc uses what looks like electroshock therapy turned into a ghost power to mess with his head.

* * *

Sam used as a jump scare on Dean again (it happened twice in Phantom Traveller), but this time something’s actually up with Sam.

* * *

Dean keeps on rolling natural 20s on Detect Hidden Door. *proud of him*

… Well that’s one way to open it.

Heh, being shot by his own brother is literally salting the wound.

* * *

Sam comes along spewing out all the meta I’ve written about him getting more and more resentful about Dean following John’s orders and being a good little soldier and how sick Sam is of always being told what to do…

* * *

Heh, Dean’s reaction to the mummified doctor. How much time does he spend around corpses?

He’s so easily grossed out.

* * *

Pfft “that would be awkward” re: Sam trying to kill Dean again. Yeah, let’s just avoid the brothers trying to kill each other from now just because it would be awkward.

* * *

Not sure it was great for Sam to say he didn’t mean any of it? Like he could have owned to being frustrated by the stuff that he said, but, you know, that obviously the ghost putting him in a murderous rage exaggerated everything that had been mild annoyance. Not owning up to any of it (more lying, Sam!) and shoving it away just makes it sound like you think enough of it - up to and including the murder rage for all Dean knows - to be actually that upset to the point of violence about this all.

* * *

And then since the whole frustrating arc has gone far enough that it boils over like that, John  _finally_ has a good place to cut in and call them before anything else happens.

* * *

I am getting way too invested in this old search for John like I have no idea what’s to come in the next 208 episodes.

Ah, peaceful innocent days. 


	11. 1x11

The cold open literally starts with someone being given an apple pie of death. This is the beginning of pie’s long association with the show. When did we  _ever_  decide that Dean getting to eat his pie was a good thing? It is  _always_  an omen of doom. About the only time I can remember him actually eating pie was with Karen and her zombie!pies.  _Why do we want Dean to have pie so much_?

What is most tragic about this is that a perfectly good apple pie was made, boxed up and handed to them and then put in the back of the car and  _never eaten_  because they get murdered by the scarecrow in a few minutes. I kind of hope the creepy cultists villagers, when they dispose of the car, make sure to grab the apple pie back. They may be creepy cultist villagers but  _pie_.

* * *

This guy’s shirt reminds me a lot of one of Sam’s shirts from the early seasons.

Except on Sam’s one the flowery patterns are on the inside? It’s a shirt that looks perpetually inside out. I can not describe how much I dislike that shirt for that reason if you don’t already get why that is frustrating. 

* * *

I really don’t like this scarecrow but I’m afraid Robbie has ruined it forever with the adorably harmless one Dean and Marie burned in Fan Fiction. I just immediately remembered the not-jump scare when Dean saw it.

And then I remembered the burning resentment we didn’t get any line about it being fugly.

*vague season 10 disappointment colouring everything about this episode*

* * *

I wonder if Dean was subtextually a smoker in season 1?

The ash tray is empty but on top of their newspaper like it got moved around or even brought over.

Maybe all the coffee was Dean trying to quit around Sam and pretending like he hadn’t started smoking since they last saw each other, but, like, once you’re joined at the hip he’s going to find out sooner or later because if you sneak one cigarette at a gas station when he thinks you’re in the loo you’re going to stink up the car, and at this point they’re getting tenser with each other anyway, so why not obnoxiously smoke in the room with him just to vent frustration?

…

Or the ceiling fan was on too high (apparently it was a hot night - shirtless Dean!) and the newspaper kept flapping around annoying Dean and so he used the ashtray as a paperweight.

* * *

“I’m fine” - from John.

Sam says “we’re fine” as well.

I’m  _obviously_  listening to a Winchester conversation.

* * *

Ugh, Dean putting on a t-shirt before grabbing the phone to talk to John. He needs his layers. :< 

(never mind his OMG Dad look in the background.)

* * *

I find it pretty amusing that John is like “they’re everywhere” and stresses how nothing is safe, and then Sam will go off and meet Meg this episode and then take the rest of the season to find out that this was a bad thing.

At least John is finally somewhat upfront about things and says it was a demon - possibly because we just can’t get this far into the season  _without_  knowing as an audience, but of course considering how much more John knows these two nuggets of information are not much to go on at all.

He basically warns Sam away (for his own safety) but as a vague ultimatum that they need to stop looking for him with no explanation other than it not being safe, and then tries to distract them with more cases to do - deferring his old hunting job onto them, but Sam rejects that outright. I do think a lot about how Sam basically never got a chance  _not_  to be in the family business until the end of season 7 and how at the first opportunity he bailed out for a year. His comments in 10x18 about how he loves the job (but can’t do it without Dean) kinda go with that if you take away the surface level and look at the fact that Dean always  _makes_  Sam do the job (or at least, in season 1 and season 8, which were the two times Sam came back into it from a break with no plot behind him to keep shoving him, Dean pushed him instead… In this season’s case, to do the MotW rather than the main plot, in season 8 both.)

* * *

Just in case it wasn’t clear where the Dean = John parallel was coming from, John helpfully says “I’ve given you an order now you stop following me and you do your job.”

* * *

Then we have Dean saying he’ll take down the names, and a cut to them in the Impala heading off to do the case. No more arguments - they’re doing what John said and Dean will enforce that.

* * *

Dean this is why you don’t let Sam drive when he’s feeling rebellious.

I guess the moment Sam had a lead to go on this was inevitable - last episode he was desperately looking for one but didn’t have a counter-argument to the case John sent them. This time he’s actually got something to follow.

* * *

Also it is pretty amusing if John was in California the whole time (shh we know he was in Kansas a couple of episodes ago) just because of where Sam started.

* * *

Oooh man, you can  _see_ Dean’s face freeze up when Sam basically challenges him that he doesn’t miss Mary enough to be properly revenge motivated.

It does make you wonder what Mary would think about all the times she’s dragged into their drama - how she’d mediate between them or tell them they were both being ridiculous. :< Having her so much more present in the background of these early seasons is really sad.

* * *

This fight is a spilling over of the theme of saving people vs single-minded revenge… Sam says he doesn’t care that John doesn’t want them to help and that he gave them an order - and he certainly doesn’t care about their own personal safety here even though that was John’s main concern in keeping them away. (I mean I don’t  _like_  John but I can recognise he did all this to protect the boys, no matter how much it emotionally screws with them.)

Dean pulls the saving people card again, since in this case they have a CLEAR warning that this pattern means 2 people are going to die on this exact date that they know about in advance: basically an ultimatum of the next two people’s lives versus dropping everything to get revenge on one demon.

In this case Sam does not care about these two randoms they don’t even have a name for yet, but once Dean knows it’s going to happen, he can’t imagine  _not_  doing it. Like, yes it was his orders to do it, but it’s still a mission he considers worth going on for the sake of saving lives. We basically go right from Dean saying “saving lives” to Sam saying “revenge.”

* * *

Winchester road trips are really fun.

* * *

*siiigh* “I don’t understand this blind faith you have in him.” “It’s called being a good son.”

Maaan the early seasons Destiel is unreal. All this stuff gets scooped up and repackaged in a trenchcoat and scowl in 4 seasons.

I mean the mention of  _faith_. The idea that being a good son is following loyally and  _having_  faith in that absent father whose orders come to you and you can’t be sure what it’s really all for at this point. But you know what the core mission is, beyond what anyone tells you, even the authority figures you’ve always trusted. And that’s being a good person.

*quiet Destiel sobbing* Dammit [joshuapiano13](http://tmblr.co/mDGFJLH7kfhgvCNg1L91fog) THIS IS YOUR FAULT. I might not have given this line more than a cursory nod if you hadn’t set me looking for it. >.>

* * *

Dean calls Sam a selfish bastard for heading off. Given this is pretty much a point where Sam throws in his lot with John’s  _current_  mission and Dean makes a split for the generic “family” business, I’m taking this as a commentary on John as well, somehow. Yes, they’re fighting about Sam not wanting to stick around and save people, but they’re showing that this revenge-driven mindset is selfish and as an extension of that A: we know Sam gets this from John like literally they have the same backstory and react to it the same way; this is a family trait, and B: John also ditched out of the saving people side of things at the beginning of the season and every time he sends them a case instead of doing it himself (I know I know bigger more important things to be doing but it’s about revenge more than saving the world for John too, no matter what the end result of the mission would be coincidentally) it further draws that line between him and saving people,  _also_  making him a selfish bastard for going off to do the main quest by Dean’s logic, except he won’t say that about John (yet).

I mean, Sam picking family and personal motivation over the lives of others is a  _wee_  bit of a common theme, she says side-eyeing 10x23. Interesting how it has the same moral quandary for Sam but on a potentially global scale.

Again, I think the upfront knowledge that there  _will_  be 2 sacrifices that night is the key to understanding just how important this fight is for Sam’s character development. We see him make the decision to ignore that; I can’t remember clearly but I think he only turns around and heads back because he thinks Dean is in trouble, not because he feels bad about the potential sacrifices dying? He’d have faith that Dean was handling it.

* * *

I  _think_ they had this fight on a railroad crossing?

which is a great metaphor of different paths/directions/general incompatible directions they want to head.

* * *

This creepy town has always bugged me because the roads are so narrow and the whole place looks kinda fake. Or like… ornamental. Are there actually towns that look like this in America? It looks like a themed fake town for some sort of tourist attraction.

* * *

Never forget the first thing Meg ever says is “you scared the Hell out of me.”

Her entire introduction scene is just a joke on the fact she’s a demon.

She probably killed shady van guy.

* * *

 _I never realised you can see the scarecrow breathing when Dean first meets him._ Oh my god there was a guy in there all along. It’s SO CREEPY and horrible because it’s not still: it’s showing  _actual signs of life_  while Dean is all up in its face. Aaaugh. I forgot how much this show  _creeps me out_.

* * *

Identifying the victim by the tattoo is grim but makes me think of the crappy Styne guy who got a new arm for 10x22.

* * *

Oh man Sam not even thinking about stealing a car.

Heh. Meg “cut him loose” re: shady van guy. Oh you.

Thinking of how everyone has the same hair as Sam here, Meg’s short hair is perfect for it. Since Meg Masters’s ghost in 4x02 meant they had to retcon the hair that Meg-the-demon (ugh maybe I should just call her not-Meg for the rest of this rewatch, I always found it shady they used Meg Masters’s name for her the entire time - hate the casual identity theft they let not-Meg get away with >.>) it basically means now that to make herself more approachable to Sam, not-Meg cut her hair to match.

* * *

A return of the Pie of Death. Dean orders his usual “coffee, black” and then some pie. (of Death).

Aw man, the victims are on a road trip and Dean says “me too” and all season Sam’s been saying he’s on a roadtrip  _with his brother_  and of course he’s not there to say it himself so there’s a nice big missing gap where Sam is.

*sobs* Dean offering to take a look at the car of the victims, and they’re saying they’d rather have a real mechanic do it. 

Then Dean points out Sam isn’t there and how useful he’d be at emotionally manipulating the victims. Heh.

This is as I’m sure everyone’s pointing out, the first time we see Dean doing stuff on his own in canon ([10x02 shows us Dean killing Cole’s dad a little earlier in canon](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120356791763/iwatchthepie-10x02-flashback-dean-and-cole)) and right now he’s doing a great job of being tragically alone and in need of real support. Which brings me back to the stuff I was blathering on about while watching Phantom Traveller about him being alone and traumatised for much of the time Sam was at college. *making myself really sad over this scene*

* * *

Sam and not-Meg are drinking together (I think I saw in another’s rewatch notes that there hasn’t been much/any alcohol consumption on screen in the early part of the season?), and she continues emotionally manipulating him while showing off a lot of one shoulder.

I think it’s pretty ironic her talking about living her own life considering if you’re going to make not-Meg tragic, the bit with Lucifer in Abandon All Hope is pretty tragic, and her drifting aimlessly trying to make power grabs for the next 3 seasons after that even more tragic in terms of her trying to live her own life without really knowing what that would be or how to do it.

… I don’t always tend to feel sorry for not-Meg especially based on later stuff where she starts killing beloved characters like Ellen and Jo or  _assaulting_  beloved characters like Jo (What did Jo ever do to you, not-Meg??), but hearing those words come out of her mouth, aimed to appeal to Sam and not because she necessarily believes or subscribes to them herself, makes you wonder if she would… But at the end of the day she’s just another good little soldier in a bigger game.

* * *

(TBH that angle of why you could like Megstiel is pretty canon thanks to their conversation in 8x17 and all that stuff about finding a cause in season 7, and then you just reverse engineer how they’re all getting this character inspiration from Dean and how the dynamic is apparently ship-worthy in not-Meg and Cas so fill in the blanks between Cas n Dean :P)

* * *

Just to re-iterate the imagery this episode, Dean drives back into town under a railbridge with a train crossing it.

* * *

Dean telling Sam he can cope without him. Aww man. I mean, he  _can_  but he’s all sad and mopey.

I like how they can talk quite reasonably about this case despite the fight.

Sam offers to come back if Dean actually needs his help and Dean sounds like he’s actually managed to come to terms with Sam going off to do the thing.

Or at least can respect Sam’s decision to do it. He sort of turns it into how Sam is more able to stand up to John and therefore be his own person and get what he wants, and then we get the most heartbreaking thing of the  _whole_  John and Dean thing - the little sad hitch in Dean’s voice where he says “Hell, I wish I-” and then cuts off abruptly and changes the subject to how proud he is of Sam.

Just, like, kill me or something. It would hurt less.

* * *

Not-Meg totally listened in on the whole thing.

* * *

“I’m afraid Indiana isn’t really known for its pagan worship.”

No, but:

there are worse things in Indiana.

* * *

That little huddle under the umbrellas always makes me think of the circle of suspiciously over-concerned notable citizens in Hot Fuzz except these guys have a serious motive.

* * *

For the common good. *holds a torch under her face*

I suppose the problem with a really tiny village is that you have a really small pool of potential back up victims.

* * *

Yeah, Sam only does actually turn around to go back to the creepy village because Dean is in trouble. Though to be fair, he did initially think that Dean could handle it.

* * *

“But I’m your family.”

“Baby, that’s what sacrifice means. Giving up something you love for the greater good.”

>.> 

* * *

“Hope your apple pie is freaking worth it.”

TBH it’s amazing Dean didn’t take violently against pie with the sort of blood oath he has against lamps. But then, the lamp was trying to kill Sam: the pie spelled the doom of Dean and he’s a self-destructive guy so it sort of fits with his relationships, doesn’t it? 

* * *

Fourth jump scare of Sam on Dean (this is more than a pattern and Dean has not managed to pay back the favour on Sam yet.)

* * *

I think the ironic thing that saves them here is that the scarecrow probably prefers couples? It’s never stated properly. But the husband and wife get dragged off instead of Dean and the girl: the girl he has least flirted with or objectified or otherwise noticed the potential relationship material of, of any of the attractive young women who’ve been on the show so far.

It’s its own reward. :P

* * *

I like how bitter she is about burning the tree causing the death of the town.

That’s my girl.

* * *

She’s also the archetype wayward orphan they put on a bus at the end of the episode. Wonder how she’s doing 10 years down the line.

* * *

Thinking of getting on a bus, it’s amusing to me how not-Meg just skips that entirely and goes back to hitchhiking just for the fun and murder.

Great music for this part as well.

And not-Meg is questioning her orders from her father… She’s a lot like Sam even if she was pretending for a lot of that bonding scene.

* * *

Things I did not expect out of this episode: to feel vaguely sorry for not-Meg. Things I will probably regret for the next 207 episodes: making a stand on calling her not-Meg instead of Meg.

She’s only in like a dozen episodes. I can handle this.

I  _mean_  she possessed Sam as well. Why don’t we just call her Sam, huh?

This isn’t even a summary of the episode any more I’m just annoyed about Meg. :P

In conclusion: pie = bad, Winchesters = sad.


	12. 1x12

Or: the moment Dean n Death started to play chess.

I’m still sobbing about that line from 10x23 btw.

* * *

I’ve always been curious about the monster they were fighting in the cold open. It snatched siblings, apparently: another parallel to the Winchester’s own story perhaps? I mean, like, are siblings ever  _not_  a parallel in this show?

Sam rushes them to safety while Dean stays behind and dies… In a very small scale way, if this is how Dean was meant to die, it’s filling out another loop in the repetition of their lives, with them taking after their usually designated parent… (I mean whatever I say here, the general overall theme everyone agrees on is Sam = John, Dean = Mary in who they most take after.)

I don’t know, food for thought.

* * *

Caroline! \o/ My favourite non-character. You have  _no_  idea what’s going to happen to you, but you’re going to end your story with a hug from Cas in 10 years or so, so you have that to look forward to.

(For the sake of argument, Erica’s little appearances are all as Caroline. :P)

* * *

I like her astrology scrubs:

Basically before she’s done asking for insurance you know that the medical professionals aren’t going to be much use here: either this is a commentary on them having as much  _effect_  as a horoscope, or else suggesting that the way to a cure is going to be through supernatural means…

Thanks for being accidentally portentous when you got dressed that morning, Caroline.

* * *

Aw man, the first time Dean tries to give Sam the car. And he actually thinks he’s gonna die for gooood. Look how awfully sparkly his eyes aaaare.

(He’s talking about hunting a teddy bear which is probably (not) foreshadowing.)

“I’m gonna die, and you can’t stop it.” “Watch me.”

I feel like that bit on a rollercoaster where it’s going *click click click* up to the top of the first dip.

* * *

I mean props to Sam, the  _first_  thing he researches is a ton of stuff about heart surgery.

* * *

Here’s that message to John that we know he got because he was getting all their messages and he never showed up. 

Dick.

(Like, this is probably the worst thing he does in the actual canon of the show as a demonstrable inaction when it comes to caring about the boys like a decent father.)

What Sam SHOULD have done is imply that the demon that killed Mary had popped up out of nowhere and grabbed Dean or something, to make John leg it over. :P Then been like lol jk he’s just sick and dying of a regular boring heart condition.

* * *

“They know don’t the things we know, right? So don’t worry because I’ll do whatever it takes to get him back.” *click click click*

I think what gets me about the whole Dean vs Death thing is it’s never been his choice  _not_  to die (like how in season 2 he sells his soul because he already took a knock in this department when John dies to bring him back to life, season 3 was him bowing to the inevitable for an entire year, season 9 he was resurrected against his will into the very thing he had hoped dying would  _stop_  happening… I mean season 5 DSotM he was sickeningly confident he  _would_  be back to the point where it was sort of a joke in the opening but it’s not like he  _wanted_  to be immortal so long as the angels had a use for them - Dean is just constantly terrible at staying dead, way more than Sam.

And after this early point, he’s sort of living outside of his time anyway. There’s just permanently something slightly off about Dean in terms of the natural order the entire time from this episode onwards (and Dean knows it), which you can kind of argue is how this particular pattern of death and resurrection and even being made functionally immortal for a year or so, all sort of fixed onto him. (Gabriel didn’t help this imbalance in Mystery Spot one bit. :P) I do feel like it’s something actually inherent to his character as a kind of knock on effect of this episode. Like maybe Dean being the one to actually kill Death was somehow fated from this moment because of being the one who has been put in this place.

Gah I just get very emotional about Dean and Death, and more than just because they both like junk food. Thinking about how it all started back here is pushing all my buttons for the kind of story I like best. :P 

* * *

“I’m not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren’t even hot.”

Headcanon: Hannah always disliked Dean on a sort of subconscious level but it was actually more ~feelings~ bleeding in from Caroline from that long ago time when Dean had been a grumpy crappy patient (who probably grumbled this to her while high on morphine or something) and Caroline just had not had time for that. All those years later Caroline didn’t exactly remember him, but she sure as hell didn’t  _like_  him, based on some gut instinct of this forgotten time. Hannah was happy to go with Caroline’s feeling about Dean without probing too deeply about where it came from, before she realised how bad the flow of emotions from her vessel was. :P

* * *

I really like this shot:

You’ve got Dean, dying, up against a black wall with wilting white and grey flowers tumbling down it. Even the bars have a vague wrought iron Victoriana sort of feel that goes with the funerary air around Dean. Then Sam against a wider open background, all green and fresh and light spilling in around him, still hopeful that Dean can be saved.

* * *

AU where through various machinations of the universe, Sam unknowingly takes Dean to Emmanuel.

Don’t even  _ask_  me how Cas got there. :P I just want him to fix Dean’s broken heart okay?

* * *

Thinking of 10x23, pretty sure that went down in Nebraska and their arrival in Nebraska this episode is marked with the Impala splashing through a puddle-filled pothole and  _not_  getting stuck, so I am finding some  _amazing_ narrative symmetry going on here. It was foreshadowing all along. Chekhov’s puddle.

* * *

Interesting how there’s so much focus on the sick people shuffling towards the tent through all these muddy puddles. The great unwashed masses coming to be healed.

* * *

Aw, here’s the first real discussion about Dean’s faith (I hold that Hook Man has the first nod that this is a ~thing~ for him). He claims to only believe in what he can see, and, well, if that includes a ton of monsters, then that’s how the world is. The thought that any force for  _good_  can exist to counterbalance the evil seems ridiculous to him.

And, I mean, we haven’t really had a force purely for  _good_  in this show, have we? God’s hardly a flawless character, even if he was around, and his angels, even Cas, are morally grey, often on the scale of making them outright antagonists. The only force we’ve had that runs remotely counter to all this ~darkness~ (shh) is love, which is still a dangerous and amoral force in itself - see the end of season 10, all done for love. I suppose it is an exact balance for the Darkness in that way, but it’s not personified in anything.

* * *

“Maybe God works in mysterious ways.” “Maybe he does,” Dean says, flirting with Layla. (”I bet she can work in some mysterious ways” once she’s offscreen.)

I mean there’s so many little callbacks to this episode with Cas, what do you think the chances were Dean would have flirted back/thought this bizarre innuendo on the phrase, if Cas had said it in 4x02? :P (Nah. But still, I’m gonna mention it anyway…)

You do have to admire how Dean can find it in himself to flirt while actively dying of a damaged heart. 

* * *

We have a shot of Sam eyeing up the weird cross right in the start of the sermon, and it being Sam that notices it, we have him at least being shown spotting there’s something a little out of the ordinary here - the lingering shot on the weird cross is designed to draw attention to it and make sure we know it’s somehow out of the ordinary). It’s interesting they put that on Sam - I suppose Dean’s misgivings about it would be too obvious so if he was the one to notice and wonder about it he might have said something right then. Sam hasn’t done any research on Roy, just taken Dean right there. Along with the guy out front protesting that Roy is a fraud, Sam  _could_  have come to a conclusion they need to be a bit more more cautious about jumping in, but then Roy picks on Dean and Sam insists he does it.

I dunno, just interesting little character stuff given Sam’s persistence on a plan to save Dean without considering the repercussions is sort of a major plot point some other time. ;) I’m not  _deliberately_  looking out for it, but I definitely wonder when they give us a carefully constructed shot like that, and picking Sam to be the one to see the weird cross.

* * *

Roy tells Dean that he will be a believer once he’s been cured, but actually it just pushes Dean to investigate the reaper he sees.

I do kind of wonder if the greater forces at work in the universe knew this is what would happen, and spurred Roy to pick on Dean first to get him fixed up immediately, and curious. Think about Death fixing Sam in 6x11 and favouring Dean so much because he was sure that Dean would figure out the thing with the souls, and told him to keep digging, basically relied on him to be his agent to fix it - the one acting to help when Death couldn’t meddle with the natural order, and Dean being the guy out of it who can meddle in what is fated (I mean as an aside on that theme the whole apocalypse as well starts because of them meddling with the natural order, but Dean being outside of the “narrative” is how he fixes it too). If we’re talking about micro-moments reflecting later massive plot arcs, Dean being saved by reapers to sort out a problem where someone was meddling with the natural order is right there.

Maybe even Dean shouldn’t have remembered the reaper he saw or even seen it if it was good at its job, but it was aware that Dean would be the person who could free it…

*shrugs* or of course it was a manipulation of destiny by the angels to keep Dean alive without overt influence, and since Roy was so faithful and believed completely that he was a miracle worker by God’s grace it wouldn’t be hard at all to nudge him to pick Dean.

Maybe the point was also from the angels to hopefully try and bring Dean around on the whole belief thing but he just remains resistant to it.

* * *

Dean’s back in his red shirt, ending the reign of the hoodie.

:’(

Dean wore this red shirt pretty much all through season 1 apparently? I feel like we don’t see it again until season 10? Or is that one just the same colour? The real question is why did they  _stop_  putting him in red shirts after season 1 when they bring out his eyes so much? I am SO GLAD season 10 added 2 red shirts to his wardrobe.

* * *

Hahahaha Dean asking Sam to have some  _faith_  in him being nervous about the reaper.

* * *

Oh lordy I forgot about Roy saying he looked into Dean’s heart and saw he had an important job to do that wasn’t finished. So it’s pretty much canon that the angels set this up to fix Dean, and more importantly this is a very close mirror to what Cas says in 4x01 to Dean which means I am totally headcanoning that Cas was looking after Dean in this episode and the one who bumped Roy to pick Dean.

Brb.

*goes outside, stands in the street and wails loudly*

* * *

I do wonder about Daphne as a parallel to Sue-Ann, as the wife of a healer. She knew Emmanuel was special, and I’m guessing kind of acted more as his agent as a healer than his wife and seemed mostly fascinated and proud of what he could do… I just think that with the parallels here with Roy and Cas, and the fact Gamble wrote both these episodes, it could be a callback to one of her old great episodes… Of course Daphne wasn’t up to anything sinister, so she could be a pure version of Sue-Ann, who knew the whole time she was the one controlling Roy’s miracles. 

(I really think since this was where it all started, the mirrors to Dean finding Emmanuel - looking for a faith healer to fix Sam in exactly the same way Sam was looking this episode - should have been the end of it, and would have if not for Carver Era deciding to go down the codependency shake up route. Like, this one opens it all up to the universe and sends them spiralling: Dean finding Cas instead and Cas fixing Sam for personal reasons and taking it onto himself (as much as we can complain about the  _use_  of Cas’s character in Gamble era) sort of ties a knot which loops back to this moment but rounds it off with no more troubles on either brother - Carver has to introduce a ton of things to kick it all off again from a blank slate thanks to the neatness of how it was wrapped up, and it was done in parallel to this episode.)

* * *

I like that black coat Dean has. He has some nice coats that aren’t the leather jacket. (This one has plaid on the inside to make up for the fact he isn’t wearing so much of it right now.)

* * *

I wonder if the fact Layla has a brain tumour and that’s what Roy had sort of makes his wife really wary about letting him heal her, in case the bounce back lands on him again, specifically righting what was changed in the natural order of things for him? Like she’s scared to let him go near it? So she does a ton of test heals to make sure that the theory really really works before she lets Roy heal Layla.

Thinking on Roy and Emmanuel, Cas goes to heal Sam and has it bounce back on him - because it was something he had caused in the first place and so he intentionally does it. I can’t remember if Roy even knew if he wasn’t a healer, but I remember it bouncing back on Sue-Ann in the end of this since she was the one doing the disrupting.

*musing on faith healers forever and watching over like 6 hours for a 40 minute episode*

* * *

Oooh-er, this is another motel room that Dean and his red shirt blend seamlessly into: 

He even comes in and sheds his coat so you can see him blur into it. (The bedspreads are gold with stars or crosses on in contrast - 

Dean’s part of the room (that is, the one colour-associated with him) is dark but with this bright symbol of faith, which, I guess, he just dumps his coat on and doesn’t actually go rest or sit on and take the comfortable route) He then crosses into a mottled grey and beige area, which sort of matches how Sam is wearing either washed out brown or just grey *shakes head at ambiguously murky Kripke era colours* Anyway Dean is wearing grey too under the red.

Kinda groggy on the symbolism here, but when Sam and Dean talk about the deaths Dean walks back and forth: he sits down in front of Sam to hear the bad news, but then jumps back up and moves into the darkness of the archway to yell about “some guy is dead now because of me.” He moves back into the grey to talk about the reaper, so he’s got a brief return to the personal colour while concerned about himself, and then back to Sam’s side of the room trying to talk about the case professionally? Maybe?

* * *

~~the music here~~

It’s like a small-time version of Death’s introduction. :P Even the voice over of Sam and Dean talking over the death as well. It’s just all really amazingly framed. And the congregation all in awe of the healing highlighted now we know just how  _wrong_  it is, giving us this contrast.

I just love this episode. :D

* * *

And they really loved this motel:

This is a great episode for the casual motel spotter.

Here we have Sam and Dean in a better sort of balance than the last long shot of them together. Working on the same page again to deal with the problem they have found.

* * *

You know for all we complain about later lore retcons, basically the first thing Sam does is talk about Death as the “angel of death” and Dean’s got pictures of angel-winged monsters out, and I do sometimes wonder about the duality between God and Death implied in his original introduction conversation, and how the reapers are equivalent to him as angels would be to God in that case.

 _Of course_  that doesn’t excuse the fact they randomly took a nerf in season 9 along with the angel fall spell, but they always were killed in a way reminiscent of angels - in fact I think we have our first reaper death on screen  _before_  an angel death.

Plus all that duality stuff which I liked took a different sort of hit with God vs the Darkness in season 10 so I’m honestly not sure where I stand on how to make sense of the mythos to myself right now. :P At this point just assuming reapers = angel equivalent but less powerful (with a one-track job to do) and introduced way too early for angels to be something the show took seriously at least gets you up to Carver era, and then you can start side-eyeing the rest. :P

*takes a shot for “every culture on earth”*

* * *

I am pretty amused by how their research is just a ton of visually arresting black and white pictures in various places rather than the old tomes and tons of writing we expect of later seasons.

  
  


Also we probably don’t talk enough about how Sam just produces a pack of Tarot cards from his bag.

Makes me think of Caroline’s astrology scrubs I mentioned right up at the top of this “liveblog” (which would be over 24 hours ago from me typing this :P): a lot of popular occult stuff going on in this episode: actually goes along with the “every culture in the world” line for once - this episode has demonstrations of the kind of thing they’re dealing with on a cultural level, and references to other ways similar beliefs have also appeared culturally.

* * *

HANG ON further to the whole red and grey thing, Dean’s changed out of his red and grey and moved to a black undershirt and grey shirt on top. Sam, meanwhile, has worn the same grey-brown hoodie for the  _entire_  of season 1, as far as I can tell.

* * *

“Okay, so we can’t kill Roy. We can’t kill  _Death._ ”

Dean, honey,  _stop talking_.

This is promptly followed a line or two later by the Impala splashing through that fucking pothole in Nebraska again.

I am now convinced 10x23 is a send up of this episode.

* * *

Hm, thinking back to Hook Man again, that also had a Christian killing people who were immoral, but without meaning to: this time it’s the same thing but calculated attacks and it overtly being bigoted with the news articles highlighting the gay teacher and abortion activist. It’s so early in the season they’re not exactly revisiting old ground so I assume it’s an ongoing theme about faith and judgement etc. *will keep an eye out for more this season* 

“God save us from half the people who think they’re doing God’s work.”

* * *

Saaaam. Sam Sam Sam.

So the book is written by a priest who went darkside (~daaaaaaark~side) which is a parallel to the BotD right off the bat. “It’d be a hell of a spell.” A black altar with blood and human bone… Remember what went into the painting in 10x16? And of course the BotD is made of flesh. And the actual cure spell called for more blood… Which, okay, all pretty common ingredients (quick name me 2 more season finales off the top of your head which called for blood for a spell/weapon :P)

But then Sam talks about the preacher’s wife going off on dark magic, murder… evil. “Desperate,” counters Dean. “She’d do anything to save him.”

I mean I’m not  _saying_  this is the set up for season 10 but this is kinda the set up for season 10 :P

* * *

This return to Roy’s was  _not_ marked by a dip in the pothole of doom. 3rd time’s the charm, then. Just 10 years down the line. :P

* * *

Ehehe. I didn’t comment on Dean joking about the fear of god with the cops earlier (seriously he needs to stop turning these things into innuendo - this is all even funnier in long-term hindsight) but I  _have_  to give “you gonna put that fear of god in me?” a nod because my willpower is not that strong.

* * *

Oh man the reaper coming for Dean again is marked by all the lights going off in a pattern towards him. ~daaarkness~ is coming for you Dean! :O

* * *

I think the worst part of this is Dean probably would trade himself for Layla if it was a different situation :/ He already said he feels less worthy of it than her earlier.

* * *

Always kinda bummed the reaper didn’t cure Layla and use her not-death to kill Sue-Ann, but then I guess it was just cleaning up, not dealing any more judgement: the whole point is it caused a sort of neutral death and it didn’t make a call on Layla to save her because she was good or anything - it only got Sue-Ann because she was a threat to the natural order.

* * *

Ugh this whole last conversation with Layla is so poignant. I don’t even really know what to say about it. It’s sad because we know this episode didn’t really give Dean any more faith, but he sort of learned to understand it better, and how it works for others, and it’s all great character development, but then the universe goes out of its way to wreck any faith Dean could have had until we get to that confession in 10x16 and he’s all like “God doesn’t believe in us” and uugh. Dean and faith is the worst.

That last focus on Dean makes the red room look practically black around him.

* * *

… haha this rewatch is a total mess. Let’s go back to the slightly less complicated episodes now, shall we?

I don’t even know how to sum this one up except to stare in blank horror at the pothole.

 _The pothole_.


	13. 1x13

Or: that other episode Chuck apologised for.

* * *

It’s weird the little clips of them in the Previously already look like wee baby children compared to like 12 episodes later.

* * *

I mean the actual first appearance of the truck is pretty scary. Kinda weird effect where it disappeared. They could have just made it do the ghost effect and vanish if they were going to have it vanish anyway. :P

* * *

Sam is wearing a plain grey sweater and it’s unnerving me. A  _sweater_. Season 1 Sam’s clothes were so different. He really does feel so much younger just because he’s always wearing sweaters and hoodies. I saw some clothing meta about the early seasons talking about how he was still dressing like a college student and you can kind of track him getting more hunter-y by his clothes choices. I’ll keep an eye out for when he starts dressing like Sam.

* * *

Hm, when Sam finds out Dean just went and told Cassie what they do for a day job, Sam gets angry about the fact he never told Jess, and says that Dean violated their “family rule number 1: we do what we do and we shut up about it.” In 1x01 Dean challenges Sam about if he’s told Jess as if it would have been  _better_  that he told her rather than lie to her the whole time if he was going to get that involved with another person, and in 1x02 Sam is racked with guilt because he didn’t tell Jess and it’s part of his bundle of guilt about her death (to go hand in hand with not telling anyone about the visions or doing anything about them). I talked about it in both my watching notes for those episodes (plus a few others where the subject of truth came up). It felt to me like Sam had taken that decision on himself, because if there was someone else to blame he would have: Sam’s isolation over that is one thing, and his long-time characteristic of just deliberately making clear cuts in his life, always being all in or all out, is another.

I’m guessing this is sort of just to work in counterpoint to Dean telling Cassie what they do: Sam needs to oppose it since the dynamic means, for writers, they can never just have them always agreeing or there’s no tension, and the conversations aren’t interesting, but just going with “But I didn’t tell Jess” doesn’t work on its own, since the narrative already painted that as a bad thing so they just shift around the reasons Sam didn’t tell Jess onto a new family rule or something, changing Sam’s characterisation in the opening subtly. I mean, it’s more points against John for enforcing the life on them, but it’s just undermined a load of what I wrote about their characterisation earlier, and possibly what the show was going for considering the earlier dialogue had Dean himself challenge Sam about not telling Jess, when this is presenting the sort of life lesson where you think he’d actually  _agree_  Sam shouldn’t have told her after what happened with Cassie - except this episode comes after so it’s their responsibility not to get it backwards, but it seems contrary to both Sam and Dean’s characterisation from the first couple of episodes re: telling girlfriends what they do.

I dunno, am I being over-critical? Does anyone  _care_  if I’m over-critical of Bucklemming? :P

*shuts off brain instead of analysing the dynamics going on here*

* * *

*waves at Cassie*

* * *

Paging [iwatchthepie](http://tmblr.co/mNVKHEcvz-Mgb2ySEuYpkNA): there’s a really nice lamp in Cassie’s house!

* * *

You could imply from the way the scenes cut that for a moment they wanted to have you going that Cassie’s mom was the truck driver. She came in all nervous and then it cut to a car accident. (Do we actually get to meet any of these victims before they’re killed or all they just traffic accident statistics the moment we lay eyes on them?)

* * *

“I’m the last person you should talk to you like that.” “Why’s that?” “Why don’t you ask your mother?”

I know it’s trying to make it sound like she’s got more to say on the subject,  _but_  it also sounds like he’s literally just insulting her. :P

* * *

The bacon hotel room from 1x03 has been usurped! Season 1′s reigning Weird Motel is here!

  


“It’s a pheasant. Why is there a pheasant?”

“I don’t know, Dean.”

“Is it complimentary? Is that why there’s a stuffed pheasant in here?”

“Dean, don’t steal the pheasant.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

“I’m gonna swipe that vinyl though.”

“…”

* * *

(Well he had to start his collection somewhere, right?)

* * *

BTW is the truck period appropriate? It’s meant to come from the 60s. I don’t know anything about cars. :P

* * *

*sits around feeling awkward second-hand embarrassment for Dean with all this relationship drama* Sam certainly knows how to make him feel awkward. :P *not at all thinking about how that bit next to the car gets paralleled to the ‘CasDean?’ argument in Fan Fiction nope*

*probably everyone is saying this but eh it’s always worth repeating*

* * *

More awkward relationship stuff with Cassie! \o/

Do kind of think she should have been doing actual research as a reporter on this case. Like, she was just writing some random tribute to one of the victims? Which, fine, okay, but she doesn’t seem to be journalist-ing very pointedly towards any answers about this? Like she doesn’t push it with her mum after multiple hints there was something up there?

They talk about keys and doors as a relationship metaphor which is  _hilarious_  with all the talk of keys and doors around these parts. 

I know I’m probably just being grumpy but even though she dumped him I kind of don’t like how she is the one to say sorry? But on the other hand I do like how Dean actually getting kind of vulnerable and admitting to feelings is the way that happens, so I suppose I can let the actual argument slide. *pokes at this episode with a stick*

* * *

Sam points out that Dean didn’t make it to the motel. He is probably secretly glad he didn’t have to put up with any more jokes about the pheasant.

* * *

So Cassie has looked up literally none of this historically, despite working for the paper herself and Dean is just looking up stuff in the history of the paper? It’s a good thing he showed up to do all this research for her while she makes coffee! :P *[is not thinking about this post while her mum explains it](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120225812343/greekedtext-replied-to-your-post-i-actually-dont)*

For example! Cassie could have got all the legwork on it and then confronted her mom and just got the last emotional whammy thing?

Like, that fire at  _least_  would have been in the newspaper. I dunno, just throwing quick ideas out there to give Cassie a bit more agency in this story. She was even looking at some of the backstories of the victims before Dean came in and started snogging her! Dean’s dick derailed Cassie’s narrative arc into “makes coffee and cries” girl. Yup.

* * *

*tunes out like over a minute of Sam and Dean explaining the plot to each other again in case we missed any of the really obvious details*

* * *

We have an instance of Dean driving heavy machinery though!

* * *

Wait did they not burn the actual truck, just the body? They could have saved a lot of time by torching it first. I think they just wanted a car chase tbh.

* * *

Hang on this is resolved by them deciding ghosts can’t go on consecrated ground? Bucklemming’s second to last most recent episode was about a ghost that lived in a church. Never mind there’s probably, statistically, been others considering the number of churches and/or ghosts on the show. :P

* * *

Also why did the road suddenly start going through the middle of the church?

That one has bugged me for like 7 years. I remain bugged.

* * *

Aw well, bye Cassie. I hope you’re getting up to lots of useful effective journalism off-screen somewhere.

* * *

Headcanon: the pheasant is in the trunk of the car for at least from now until the end of the season. Dean probably chucked it in a rage while rebuilding Baby at the start of season 2 though. :<


	14. 1x14

I really don’t like this episode just because it’s so grim. TBH I normally skip it about as easily as Bugs despite it being a plot episode, just because of the abuse plotline. *eats an entire large bag of M&Ms before starting*

* * *

The Previously gives us a quick run through on everything we know about Sam’s visions so far - the emphasis is on ‘vibes’ ‘ESP’ and prophetic dreams.

Just thinking about it in a wider context of what  _Sam_  knows at this point, it seems to have been connected to ghosts a couple of times - Sam said “I’ve been seeing all kinds of things” and in Home and Asylum demonstrated a sort of affinity for the ghosts (out-sensed Missouri, and understood the asylum ghosts just wanted to communicate). He dreamed of Jess’s death, but also had visions/realistic but fabricated dreams of her (spotting her on the side of the road, the grave dream in Wendigo) so those ones weren’t necessarily prophetic, just super intense and disturbing. His dreams actually predicting Jess’s death are so far the only ones which fit the pattern of his later visions and abilities, so there’s a lot of extra static around that to blur where the plot relevance comes in… so far. Like he said in Home, whatever is happening to him, it’s all just started booting up.

* * *

This guy who dies in the cold open has a jet ski.

I’m pretty sure he turns out to have been an objectionable human being once we know the full story, so I’m taking it as a sign we’re not meant to like him from the start.

* * *

These are either the same blankets from Faith or the same pattern as the blankets from Faith but slightly darker, and this room is definitely  _not_  the one from Faith, since it’s blue instead of red.

(I’m sorry apparently this is as far as I go before I start taking terribly embarrassing screenshots. You have to be impressed I made it 14 episodes before cracking)

* * *

What the random neighbour says about the guy seeming “so normal” and “you never know what’s going on behind closed doors” sort of does double duty for her thinking it was a suicide and it turning out he was abusing the kid.

* * *

“I’m not looking at you like anything.” Dean immediately turns even  _more_  worried eyes on Sam.

* * *

Oh yeah, the priest outfits. Considering Dean having so much fun with turning common religious phrases into innuendo in Faith I feel like this is an extra bad idea. :P 

* * *

Hey Aunt Zelda!

* * *

Is… Sam drinking out of a jug? It’s a weird-looking mug anyway. I suppose she has a ton of guests over already. *breaks up the grimness of this episode with bad screenshots*

At least Dean just gets a pink and green mug with flowers on that looks like an  _actual_  mug.

* * *

Dean is so bad at being comforting. He’s all like *here have a tissue are there ghosts here?* and then kind of completely forgets he’s talking to a grieving widow when he gets all thoughtful about the case.

* * *

Does he ever use that cool device thingy with the green lights again? He has so much random ghost hunting equipment this season. I’m not sure they ever explain what this one is. I don’t think they hunt enough ghosts any more to explain what it is when their EMF thingy is easier to bring out.

* * *

“Hm, the exterior of this motel looks a little dodgy. I wonder what it - ”

“Oh right, we’re competing in the extreme taxidermy olympics. Of course.”

Just, like, raw birch trees planted in the floor. There’s like a wagon wheel or something chillaxing against the wall?

I’m pretty sure there’s a moose on the bedspread as well.

* * *

Sam, I get you with that headache. *squints at Sam squinting* I’m not quite fall-on-the-floor bad though. :P

* * *

I am pretty sure the window death is from Final Destination? It felt really familiar at the time and I watched at least 3 of those movies historically before dropping into SPN.

* * *

In my headcanon where Dean has a tendency to nick things from motels, I am pretty sure I know what he’d steal from this one:

Maybe he has a storage locker full of all this weird motel crud somewhere and slowly he starts sneaking it into the Bunker when they pass that way on a hunt.

* * *

Oh man, Dean managing to say “it doesn’t freak me out” with a straight face. He’s good at lying, that’s for sure. (But again with his eyes skating over as soon as he says something contrary to how he’s feeling.)

I think Sam actually fears that he’s the one doing it at this point.

* * *

It is convenient how the guy had a windowbox just under his window.

* * *

Eeeeey this is where “You’re dark” comes from. Have we had a classic Dean comeback yet? I think this is the first! *throws him a baby’s first terrible comeback party*

* * *

*long stretch of really depressing scenes*

* * *

Dean arguing that Max should be killed because he’s a monster is preeetty awkward for Sam, just saying. :P *not like this will ever be a point of tension again*

* * *

More depressing scenes! Sam and Max in their depressing brown hoodies!

* * *

I know I don’t talk about Sam as much but his life just really bums me out to a point where I’m just feeling sad and weary for him without any creative thoughts.

All of this is showing him that not being actively and openly blamed and beaten for what happened to Mary is him living a better life, having a better chance, and giving him this perspective that the awful life he  _has_  lead isn’t as bad as all that because at least John dealt with it towards an external force and abused them by varying forms of more passive neglect instead: Sam takes away from this that not being beaten is an upside that puts their family in perspective, like it suddenly makes it all that much less damaging what they went through instead - which he has already identified through this early part of the show as a terrible way to be raised - is preferable. I think there’s something he says to this effect at the end of the episode - I remember it from those A+ John Winchester Parenting posts that circulate from time to time. :P Even though Max is doing most of the talking here, you can kind of see it settling on Sam: the story we know so far being contrasted with this overtly awful one.

Like I said in one of the really early episodes talking about Dean’s fear, loneliness and sleeplessness hidden behind his dialogue with Sam: when they show us something really overt and obvious on the screen and then use another character’s presence to counteract it by offering an apparently opposing situation, it doesn’t mean they actually had the exact opposite themselves: in fact the contrast always seems to be to draw out the more subtle side where, in this case, you look at Sam and are like “Okay, you weren’t apparently beaten” but we already have him saying things through earlier episodes about how screwed up their childhood was and the way John raised them - and Sam has always been the one arguing how bad it was to Dean along the way, so  _he’s_  getting this counter viewpoint to put what he’s said in perspective, but at the same time linking them like this is sort of opening up a narrative of abuse linked to Sam anyway (They’re in the same hoodie for crying out loud).

In the conversation in the car on the way over, Sam is explaining how he sympathises with Max, and Dean interrupts him as Sam is starting to lay out points: he only gets so far as saying they’re both psychic, then Dean interrupts a point 2. Sam replies apparently to Dean’s interjection that Max is a monster by talking about how he was beaten as a reason to sympathise with him  _generally_ , but this makes his dialogue bracketing Dean’s interruption go from point A: listing ways they are similar which never finished and they have very few points of data anyway to point B: saying Max got beaten and this also should lend sympathy to him - derailed from reasons why he’s  _like_  Sam through the surface reading, but not in the subtext of the conversation.

I get suspicious of random scripted interruptions. :P They’re not so casual as they look.

But yeah, I don’t think that applies that Sam was beaten, per say, but I think it shows he empathises with Max a lot over more than just what is said on the surface, and using him to show how apparently rosy the Winchester upbringing was actually just serves to show a dark _er_ mirror of it.

* * *

Sam is so excited to find someone else with his tragic backstory he seems practically delighted despite Max being such a depressing dark mirror to him.

* * *

“You and I were chosen.” “For what?” *Sam has literally the most terrified baffled puppy expression ever* “I don’t know.”

Awww man season 1 Sam.

* * *

Max’s actor is probably a regular sized guy but he’s acting opposite Jared so I sort of assumed first time watching before I knew how tall Jared was that he was like 4 ft tall.

* * *

Huh, that’s a different pearl handled gun, without all the pretty flowers. Have we seen Dean’s nice gun yet? Or was this one all CGI so they left off the embellishments for budgetary reasons?

* * *

Sam’s bafflement when he gently nudges open the closet door after moving the dresser in front of it is kind of adorable.

Does he  _ever_  move anything else with his mind ever in like the entire show? (demons not included.)

* * *

Although I suppose the police confiscated the gun for evidence and Sam n Dean skip town after this I’d assume?

* * *

There’s a stuffed duck on the wall in their motel room too.

* * *

Woohoo here’s Sam blaming himself for Mary’s death. \o/

* * *

All the stuffed ducks in the world can’t make this a fun conversation to sit through. Or Dean messing around making light of Sam’s potential to bend spoons for fun and profit. (While being delightfully supportive :D)

* * *

“I’m sure it won’t happen again,” Dean says of Sam’s telekinesis. *still racking my brain over if Sam ever just moves random objects for fun or if he sticks strictly to random visions and demon exorcising in the future*

* * *

I am not sure we have had a classic Sam bitchface on the scale of the one he gives Dean after he says “Vegas” yet. This shall stand as the crowning moment of >:| of the season unless something better comes along.

* * *

Naaah Dean’s not at all worried about this. 

* * *

Dean looking back into the dark motel room on the way out to reveal he’s worried mirrors that shot a minute before talking over the car when Sam’s going on about how lucky they were to have John not beating them. I think that look was the sort of main weight of the discussion I read about that moment, but I think mentioning that the last shot of the episode is Dean doing a similar glance back into darkness while it’s  _obvious_  he’s worried about Sam and has been keeping up a face being supportive and cheery about it until Sam’s not looking sort of… helps.

“We turned out okay, thanks to him”:

  
  


*excessive cheerfulness about exploiting Sam for profit in Vegas*

*Sam gets in the car*

  
  


*shrugs*

Similar framing, I’m just pointing it out. :P

* * *

On that dark note, let us go to the obvious headcanon that they actually  _did_  hit up Vegas after this, and it’s where their Vegas week thing started that we found out about in season 7. 

That’s not even a cracky headcanon, that’s just filling in some gaps with emotionally resonant backstory. :P

* * *


	15. 1x15

I once watched what I thought was the same movie twice with a friend in two consecutive horror-movie nights and thought she’d just rented the video over again and forgotten while I was sitting there having deja vu, but then it turned out there were 2 different horror movies about survivalist weirdos in the depths of America killing, eating and hunting lost travellers for sport. Count me concerned that this is even a trope.

Also it makes me wonder why this isn’t, like, a constant threat for our protagonists. Is it just that, a few seasons in, they stop looking quite so much like a target and start giving off the serial killer vibes themselves?

* * *

We haven’t actually had a typical monster in a few episodes: the rawhead at the start of Faith was the last “normal” monster hunt we saw on screen. Since then we had an evil preacher’s wife and her spell as the actual threat (the Reaper being the tool but not the actual bad guy) and in Nightmare, Max was made out to be the monster but with the exact same powers as Sam so we had a focus on “what makes the monster?” and the real evil was what his family did to him to twist him that way. So even though this episode has a sort of reputation for changing things up with humans as the monsters, actually there’s been a build up of human evil being the focus of the episode towards this; it’s just got the twist that there’s  _no_  supernatural element to the episode at all. It’s not like the show has been pretending humans are great up until now even from the first episode (Constance’s back story), and there’s been a break from the urban legends for a few episodes as well now.

* * *

The kid in the opening has gold bedspreads with white stars on, while we’re tracking them. Not the same pattern, though.

* * *

There’s a ridiculous amount of costume porn here. *distracted*

* * *

Oh man this is the episode Dean takes like an hour in the bathroom to let Sam get well and truly kidnapped. Much has been speculated on what he was doing… :P It’s an odd line: everything about the framing should suggest that Dean was only a few minutes behind Sam: basically we should have only lost a few minutes (aka the time it takes Dean to pee) at most for the creepy guys to load Sam in the van and drive off. The cat is still there, although apparently pretty calm, while it hissed angrily at Sam. You can’t fathom the ways of cats to determine anything. The cat is invalid data. But the guys Dean runs over to ask, just looking at the set up for that without the dialogue, are coming out of the pub apparently on his heels since we only just saw him go out  _and_  if it was only in the last 3 minutes or so, and they were only just coming out as well, then there’s a minuscule, illogical window where they could have been outside and then back in again and then coming  _back_  out the door for them to have feasibly seen what happened, which suggests Dean  _did_  take more time than was shown on screen unless he’s panicking so much he just assumes random people who were indoors the whole time might have magically also been outside in the last couple of minutes. But then he says  _in the last hour,_ which explains the framing of the question so you kind of have to go with it being an hour, as it explains the strange set up to asking the question in the first place, which disturbs the “just the time to pee” framing.

Basically you have to counter this one with Dean’s brain completely shorting out in a panic (despite him then having the clever thought about the CCTV) or that he petulantly stayed in the pub to finish the game of darts he was playing while he and Sam were talking, but aside from that I don’t have many alternatives for you that aren’t unfortunate implications caused by sloppy writing. :P 

* * *

Ah man, we’re nine years before Donna’s time. She might not have even become a police officer yet - maybe she’s still in training or doesn’t even know what she wants to do yet. Maybe this town’s history of missing person cases made her interested in the law. Maybe this case hitting the newspapers spurred her on! I hope this episode’s awesome lady cop stuck around in the force and took her under her wing when she started.

Maybe Donna was one of the scruffy punks at the bar.

* * *

Aww Dean going through the proper channels to find Sam. I mean he did just want the CCTV footage, but at the same time, we have him actually getting her to look up the  _real_  Sam on an actual national database and talking to the authorities to try and find Sam, and like,  _actual missing person reports_.

* * *

“When we were young I pretty much pulled him from a fire, and ever since then I’ve felt responsible for him, like it’s my job to keep him safe.”

*angry sobbing feelings about Dean saying it’s his job to look after Sam* Uugh. That level of responsibility plus a high-stress dangerous job? Literally a cataclysmic combination. :P

* * *

Aw, Sammy being precious about being called Sammy.

* * *

Who decides to hunt people on a rainy night? Rainy nights are for staying in and watching TV.

* * *

I mean they probably started doing this because there was nothing good on TV but even so.

* * *

Aw Dean getting coffee with her now he’s bonding with the police officer. (I still haven’t managed to catch her name, this is getting embarrassing.)

* * *

Kathleen! Phew.

* * *

Anyway I do think it’s great that there’s literally nothing in this episode where Kathleen couldn’t have just been some dude cop, but they cast a woman for this role. This show seems pretty okay at female cops, considering I just sat here for like 5 minutes (I have a headache shh) trying to remember any male police-related characters and only came up with Victor, opposed to Jody and Donna for interesting recurring characters championed by the fandom. I remember a few random crime scenes with lady cops going unremarked and just being side characters but still having a presence (I can think of an example from season 8 9 and 10 each immediately, and 2 of those were women of colour as well, and the season 8 one had multiple appearances through the episode… It’s not  _all_  bad even if they’re usually background characters, like, at least they’re  _there_ ).

Anyway Kathleen has the same story as Dean for this episode and the general angst about a missing brother to make her sympathetic to him, and so we have one of our first obvious female Dean mirrors, which is also nice, just considering that he collects those. :P 

* * *

Hehe, paperclip reference. Are you allowed to have in-jokes with your own show when you’re only halfway through the first season? Given it’s not a plot-heavy show, I say this is allowed and probably the only kind of continuity you really need at this point. :P

* * *

I have never been able to tell if they actually had mist machines or if it really was this bad, OR if they only filmed on misty days and used mist machines to make it worse.

* * *

Missy’s little pink bow is super creepy. Like, did they buy it in town for her? Or did it come from a victim? Missy looks really badly cared for compared to the adult men who have proper clothes and stuff so she probably had to nick it for herself if they aren’t caring for her properly… They’re too far from town to have got it for herself unless it came from someone who came onto the property which is creepy enough on its own.

* * *

I think this is our first creepy barn as well, actually? Like, what a start to the trend of creepy barns. They don’t make creepy barns like this any more on the show.

* * *

I think they recycle this decaying house set a few times as well. Never quite as creepily again, when this one has human bone wind chimes. :P

* * *

I like the jaunty piano music over this fight scene. Poor Dean. Sold out by Missy… She comes back in season 7 as Emma so this seems like a terrible father-daughter bonding moment for Dean.

* * *

Creepy daddy hunter talking about what he’s hunted reminds me of Dean in Wendigo getting all up in that guy’s face because he felt he was a superior hunter for hunting monsters instead of just bears because they were smarter and more vicious. Except this guy is talking about hunting people for that same thrill. Puts it in perspective. :P But also makes a weird kind of parallel between their mindsets.

I’m not saying Dean would be a creepy serial killer if he wasn’t a monster hunter, just that there’s this weird macho posturing about being better than the things you kill - remember in 10x22 where he was all “I kill gods.” I mean at this point if you want to be all superior to the stuff you kill Dean pretty much trumps everything in the universe, since Death already said he personally trumps God. :P

I’m really not sure where I’m going with this tangent. I’m guessing it’s all part of the toxic macho identity crap Dean has going, and his rear end of season 10 descent had a lot of that.

* * *

Also this evil guy casually uses “bitch” to refer to the cop, while I’m drawing comparisons.

* * *

Ugh, Dean being made to pick, picking Sam because he rates his fighting chance, only to hear he condemned Sam. Even with the guy immediately following it with an order to kill Kathleen too it’s just horrible mind games on Dean. :<

* * *

Which… considering what happened, I think he underestimated how badass Sam can be in a tight spot. :P

* * *

Missy left to have some fun with Dean, pointing a knife at his eye… I can see why he was conflicted about her being his daughter. :P

* * *

(Okay I lied I will never not find double casting funny)

* * *

That bit where Kathleen drops from above on the guy is awesome.

… Ah, but then she shoots the dad and lies about him trying to escape.

And then is interestingly conflicted about it. Hm. I’m not saying she should have killed him, especially when Sam was shown loading the sons into the cages to get them out the way without killing them, so there was a clear alternative, but I suppose she’s an early warning for all the revenge for a dead brother stuff the guys do: showing that in a character paralleled to one of the brothers, revenge like that is very much on the table. I think between this and Dean tied to a chair raging about how he’d kill all of them if they hurt Sam is the first time we really see how violent they might get for each other? Like Faith shows us how  _desperate_. Here’s the flipside of that then.

* * *

Dean giving Sam the “never do that again” speech as they walk away. :’) He’s got a bit more humour about it than with Cas in 9x03, that’s for sure.

I wonder if the dorky music cue at the end of that scene was meant to emulate the mood of this scene where Dean is trying to make light of his concern, but what they ended up filming was more intense looks between him n Cas instead, which was why it felt so off?

* * *

*makes it to the end with no screenshots* This episode was just not visually amusing to me, what can I say? :P

This beats out the time I spent on Faith because I started with a headache, went slow, got dragged off to my mum’s birthday dinner, rewatched 10 minutes of it drunk, went to bed, and watched the rest of it hungover. 

[Originally posted by serialhumor](https://tmblr.co/ZTI4qsgJZXZP)

If you can’t tell where those phases of watching begin and end I win.


	16. 1x16

Or: I feel we as a fandom do not talk enough about Sam’s abseiling career.

* * *

Aw, I always like the girl from the cold open. She’s cute. Takes a  _really_  inadvisable route home though, even if she wasn’t being pursued by shadow demons.

* * *

Come to think of it, that’s a point. Pretty sure these things were advertised as an off-brand version of demon back from when the lore was a lot more shady (heh) on what a demon was and they had room to have them as sort of much more borderline monsters.

* * *

Do you think it is the most adorable thing ever that they have their actual names on those jumpsuits?

It’s the most adorable thing ever.

* * *

Aw back when werewolves obeyed the moon.

(And Sam just  _knows_  the lunar cycle without thinking about it? I mean maybe he just happened to spot the moon and think about it actively the other day or something: that’s how I casually keep track of it while not being actively aware I might hunt a werewolf anytime soon :P) (Still, filing this under the same heading as Sam just casually having tarot cards in Faith.)

Curious about the demon stealing hearts - I can’t remember if that actually comes around again or if it was just a trait of the demon’s killing pattern? There’s a lot of stuff thematically in this show about hearts and it sort of links back to Dean all the time, from Faith through to all those times he gets called the Tin Man in comparison to Sam being the Scarecrow. The demon doesn’t get specifically linked to Dean - this is more of a Sam episode.

Actually, I think it’s kinda funny, we have Dean talking about the girl he hooked up with to get info and he sort of goes all dudebro in the bar as well with Meg later… I wonder if there’s a slight bit of Tall Tales storyteling which low-key happens all over the show when Sam or Dean is more the focus of the episode, and the other gets relegated to the position the brother  _sees_  them, with the unsubtle main traits forefront, and any subtlety masked behind that? (I mean we  _also_ get that go-to genius!Dean moment in this same scene with the masking tape and blood, and we know Sam  _eventually_  openly rates Dean’s intelligence to him. This could be a subtle turn around on how in 1x03 Sam wasn’t so impressed about him making the EMF meter (which Dean is waving around usefully this scene proving its worth and his by extension) so this could be a subtle little arc from Sam’s scoffing  _you made that_  to a scene showing Sam sort of seeing Dean be clever all over the place and beginning to appreciate him a bit more.)

* * *

Further to old stuff I discussed near the beginning of the season, we have Sam visually demonstrating earlier and then confirming in dialogue that he was the one who found the newspaper clipping and pushed for them to investigate it: he’s like, “I knew this was our kind of thing.” He’s now fully embracing the casual random hunting side of things (I don’t think it was an accident the Previously focussed heavily on their bust up in Scarecrow before showing Meg instead of just cutting right to it - they could have used any argument about finding John from the season). Last episode it was pretty neutral about who instigated the hunt as it started with them already investigating and with Dean doubting if it was a case and Sam defending it with evidence from John’s journal in a low-key reversal of the arguments early in the season (this was after a run of episodes where the case became the case through the course of events so there was no fighting it in the same way). 

I guess the build up to have Sam properly embracing it at last (one wobble in this narrative with Bugs aside and that’s fine because Bugs doesn’t seem to count :P) has finally been realised exactly in time for demon!Meg and John to show up again and throw it all off whack after all the good work Dean did all season indoctrinating Sam back into the family business.

* * *

Hey demon!Meg! Are you going to make more demon puns? 

“Oh my god!”

I guess not. :P

* * *

… I have a top kind of like hers but darker and with a tiny bit more sleeve. I hate to say it, but demon!Meg does dress nicely all the time. :P 

* * *

Things that will always amuse me: demon!Meg’s first ever interaction with Dean. She just loves stirring trouble… Dragging up that old fight. Like I said: Sam n Dean being at a nice equilibrium can’t last long. :P 

“If it were me, I’d kill him.”

Meg Meg Meg… You always threaten and never quite go through with it.

“Who the hell was she?”

 _Honestly_  the most amusing part of this is them not knowing she’s a demon.

You know what? Sitcom AU: Meg moves in upstairs and somehow they just  _never_ find out she’s a demon for season after season and it’s all awkwardly inserted accidental demon jokes.

(Kind of like I guess I hear things about Hannibal always implying cannibalism in the dialogue? I’ve never, uh, worked up an appetite to watch that show :P)

* * *

“Am I keeping you against your will, Sam?” this is basically everything about how I was characterising Sam staying with Dean in the early part of the season: Dean managed to keep him in line with tactics we could see on screen to stop Sam leaving and so the bust up back then was a boiling over of Sam actually rebelling against an attempt to always keep him away from the main plot. Though they worked through it demon!Meg has basically poked at the biggest issue in their early season relationship and opened up the wound again. It was very cleverly done on her part.

* * *

“I think there is something strange going on here.” “Tell me about it, she wasn’t even that into me.” 

*resurrects the old love pentagram and quietly draws in one more directional arrow I never thought I’d get* Basically just need Cas to be romantically linked to Sam and I’ve got a full set, minus the fact no one should be  _expected_  to return interest to Crowley (and the fact there’s even 1 arrow pointing to him is alarming enough :P)

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised about season 1 Dean showing at least a passing interest in literally every young female-bodied thing on the show so far?

* * *

Bumped into her  _literally_  on the side of the road.

Literally.

* * *

Uuugh further to demon!Meg stealing Meg’s life; she uses Meg Master’s IRL life and home address to throw them off the trail.

* * *

Daevas are demons are ~~daaaarkness~~

It would be pretty neat to see them again after all this time.

…

I still  _kinda_  don’t think the Darkness is totally evil because of Death saying it was “amoral” but it’d definitely chaotic and destructive, and these demons were bound and controlled by a spell and then just like the reaper in Faith, took revenge on demon!Meg (?); they didn’t ally with her or act like regular demon minions. 

You know who would be really useful to help with the Darkness? Demon!Meg. She knew some “very very old school” magic. She was Azazel’s daughter and who knows how old he was but canon is so murky on the early seasons compared to even later in Kripke that we can’t be sure if he was named after a fallen angel or  _was_  an actual fallen angel demon… Either way, he was right up there with Lilith in Lucifer’s top spot, given Cain and the knights of hell were retconned in later and were all currently retired, dead or caught in a time warp for the entire of canon up until season 8 :P I have always mused on Meg as a knight of hell since we found out about them (and still think it should have been revealed she was until they decided to kill her off quick and easy - yes, I still remember my short-lived headcanon from the middle of season 8 where it lasted for like 3 episodes :P)

You know what, I am very tempted to do one of those re-write-a-season posts where I give us knight of hell demon!Meg and how she would have been awesome.

* * *

Aw nooo we were doing so well, and then Sam was like “lol what was the last book you read” and Dean went blank and changed the subject. :< 

* * *

And then he started wildly over-sharing about biting people.  _Dean_.

* * *

Oh my god, this was back before every demon in the universe knew what a black 67 Impala meant.

* * *

Well, I mean, I’m pretty sure demon!Meg knew Sam was there? Maybe? She was setting a trap for sure but how  _much_  was she setting a trap? I can never remember when I watch this. I feel like I’ve had this exact thought process like 30 times.

…

How many times  _have_  I watched season 1?

So many.

* * *

Thinking of historic complaints my brain runs through so many times, how did Sam  _know_  that climbing the elevator shaft would get him exactly where he wanted to be. What if demon!Meg was on the second floor in a perfectly ordinary boring non-sinister room.

* * *

Thinking of sinister, I know demon!Meg wouldn’t jump easily, but this always creeps me out about her working environment when thinking about if  _I_ was conducting shady business there:

I’m just not cut out for this cheap evil villain lifestyle.

* * *

I often think about Sam in this episode being forced into a weird peeper/trespasser role to demon!Meg. I don’t know how much of it was machinations by her, but between this and the shot of her in her bra (which Sam is reprimanded for) he kind of gets pretty invasive by accident while trying to uncover the truth.

Hm, her call she makes here sounds like she really didn’t anticipate them being there? I thought the victims were picked as an extra honeypot for them? 

…

Nah, she  _must_  have known that Sam was following her and listening. This call is too carefully calculated and I don’t think they come here again until the trap has been mostly sprung and John summoned. I was right about everything except for demons not recognising the car. They already know. :P

(right as in “remembered obvious plot facts about this episode while claiming to have seen it 300 times.”)

* * *

“What the Hell?”

Oh my  _god_  this sitcom situation of demon!Meg but no one knowing is getting funnier and funnier.

…

Imagine an AU where Cas showed up in 4x01 but they had no idea it was him who pulled Dean out of Hell and he spent most of season 4 trying to do his thing covertly, and it getting more and more ridiculous, and in the mean time the angel puns were stacking up.

…

Destiel probably would have been canon just so Dean could unironically call him “angel” without realising.

I’m just saying, sitcom AU style situations fix everything.

* * *

“So Sammy’s got a thing for the bad girl.” Oh dear, Dean, pls don’t foreshadow how, okay he had no interest in Meg by this point, but he does end up linked to a fair few non-human ladies…

* * *

*files Sam casually referring to how witches scry and stuff under the same heading as his tarot-owning, moon-phase-knowing habits* 

I’m just saying, witch!Sam makes an annoying amount of sense. Annoying as in I kind of feel obligated to point out every time it makes sense. :P

* * *

I think demon!Meg found the only two people in Chicago from Lawrence.

* * *

This is such a bleak motel room. It’s just blue and washed out with loads of space and bare floorboards.

But look what came baa~aack just in time for demon plotline stuff!

Told you those diamond bedspreads were significant :P

* * *

Now excuse me while I die over Sam saying that he’ll be “people” again when this is over and Dean being tragic about “I don’t want you to leave the second this is over.” *sobs* He just wants his family to be together. :<

* * *

“I’m not going to live this life forever,” Sam says. And says when it’s all over, he’ll go his own way. TBH I do count it being all over as the end of season 7, give or take a little leeway regarding Kevin… But in terms of mytharc and main plot being over, it was pretty over. I can see why Sam might have stopped there just because he was always saying he wanted to right back here… He just never got a chance to live up to his word until then.

* * *

I will never not find it funny when Sam n Dean try to be all sneaky around Meg and she knows they’re there the whole time.

Points for Dean climbing that elevator shaft as well, although Sam does it twice and on-screen so it’s still his thing for the episode. :P

* * *

I like demon!Meg’s jackets. The yellow leather one probably only works if you’re that blonde though.

I think Ruby 1.0′s red jacket it my favourite though.

* * *

Dean’s tiny eye cut is bleeding like 1000x more than Sam’s huuuge claw marks on his face. Someone really went overboard with the fake blood.

… Jensen hates that stuff so I’m inclined to think whoever applies it already knew by this point and started splashing it on.

* * *

I don’t know if I should laugh or cry that Dean tells demon!Meg that her trap won’t work because John wouldn’t come rushing in to save them because he’s too smart for that. Like, okay, maybe dumb heroics aren’t the best way to solve a thing, but reckoning that he’ll make a calculated decision not to rescue the boys from basically the worst peril they’re in thus far? Eeeeh.

(I mean he does actually show up, if I remember correctly, but still, Dean  _thinking_  this is awful. :P)

* * *

Ah demon!Meg… sexually threatening our faves since 2006.

* * *

Aw demon!Meg. “I’m doing this for the same reasons you do what you do. Loyalty. Love.” She’s so complex even here, when we  _can’t_  know about Lucifer for like 3 more seasons (I’m pretty sure Cas is the first one to name-drop him all show). Loyal to her father, maybe - a parallel to the Winchesters, and then when it becomes about Lucifer, she makes it more obvious it’s her loyalty to a  _godlike_  father figure, paralleling herself to Cas instead. 

Given where they went with her character development, no matter what was meant here (if she  _was_  just supposed to be saying shit like in Scarecrow to make Sam like her) I think she has pretty consistent characterisation all the way through. I feel like she’s actually pretty sincere in delivery here. She has a sort of “woops said too much got too real there” moment and diverts away to mocking Sam about Mary and Jess.

* * *

“Go to Hell,” Sam says, because they still don’t know she’s a demon.

“Baby, I’m already there.”

It’s almost disappointing that they’ll reveal she’s a demon soon.

* * *

Poor Meg Masters. :<

* * *

Oh my god, the John is in their room reveal has him in the shadows in a  _very_  familiar way. I mean, this is pretty well coded into the visual langauge of the show already??

Like, there’s a load of comments in the rewatch tag on the Pilot about how Mary casually mistook Azazel for John, but here we have John standing in the dark against a window and we see him from behind, and he’s a great big guy in a coat. Do the maths. :P (ESPECIALLY with the parallel demon!Meg just gave us about her and Azazel vs SamnDean and John.)

* * *

I swear the cuts on Sam’s face have got less deep.

* * *

Uugh synchronised “Yes sir”s. 

* * *

I do feel kind of sorry for them all having to act out being beaten up by shadows. (Which were nice enough to let them hug it out before really starting in on them)

* * *

Oh my god is that a very early appearance of The Rug? Or at least, one a lot like it. I feel like The Rug is a more recent character. Shame we only get it via flare.

* * *

There’s the sound of a train in the background as Dean insists they have to split up - remember in Scarecrow how he and Sam had that fight on the crossroads with a train track?

* * *

“We almost got Dad killed in there.” I mean, technically it was demon!Meg and her daevas (band name idea!) but no, Dean, blame yourself.

Dean sort of seems to have come up with the idea first but John just rolls with it like “You’ve got to trust me son,” to Sam without making a nod to Dean’s idea - basically like they’re thinking with one brain so it doesn’t even need saying that what Dean decided is exactly what John thinks as well, because, well, duh?

At least as far as this dialogue is concerned.

I find the blurring of their thoughts really kinda creepy. :P

* * *

It’s probably not symbolic that after Sam gives up and gives John a manly shoulder clap after he says to let him go, symbolising an end of Sam’s “got to find Dad” mentality all seasons, John drives off forwards, and Dean reverses the Impala away.

* * *

This episode is “Bloody Winchesters” aesthetic. 

Both obvious definitions of “bloody”.

*shakes head*

I mean at least the world is still technically intact. :P


	17. 1x17

Or: an unheeded lesson about the power of internet fandom.

* * *

I love the idea of tulpas, okay? I think this is definitely the first actually postmodern or even meta episode, but on season 1′s own small scale, before the fourth wall was there to be intently stared at in the same way it was later. If the show  _continued_ carefully staying inside its own walls and stuck to MotW and un self-referential myth arcs, this would probably be the most meta episode they could get away with. As it was they’ve turned it into an art form, so the early groundwork laid by this episode is kind of washed over. I don’t think it’s for nothing that the tulpa got a name drop in Fan Fiction though. We’d be nowhere without the tulpa. It’s the meta episodes which have always stood out and  _really_  made this show worth talking about.

They could have had an episode about a monster that drew power from belief, but had it small-scale within the town (e.g. the groundwork laid with the local myths the kids were telling and all the power and storytelling was self-contained and therefore not worth a meta nod) and they could have had an episode with a straight up ghost and Ed n Harry stumbling in (well, like their season 3 appearance but that was 4th wall breaking in a totally  _different_  way). But they mix these two ideas up and have the combination of a tulpa and the internet thrown together.

One of the things that genuinely fascinated me for almost as long as I’ve been using the internet is the way that ghost stories get told on it. The “thinman” episode has a lot to say on how it’s depressingly ended up with everyone trying to be way too credible about things, making stuff up, and the meme-ification of creepypasta content where people are much more self aware but in it for the stories and the thrill anyway, and the popular content has this level of awareness that it may just be a fabricated story or photoshopped picture (but still inherently worth sharing whether it’s true or not, and only a few people are left actually concerned about that detail). 

But waaay back when, like, when I was 11 (2001? Ish?) my friends and I got really into ghost stories. We joined forums which discussed ghost sightings, and fairy forums, alien encounter sites, basically anything where people were discussing things about the paranormal (I may have mentioned in my Asylum re-watch how quaint it was to hear them talking about “orbs” again all this time later :P). My internet experience for probably 2-3 years was just endless talking about ghosts and monsters and possible real moments of folkloric things happening, and seeing how stories got passed around the internet (a lot of those dumb chain emails that got passed around in our sphere were collections of pictures of ghosts and stories, which often ended up on the forums we went on to get dissected and checked for validity. Except in this case it was more like looking for the element that absolutely  _couldn’t_  be explained). 

Basically, this episode actually speaks surprisingly directly to little baby internet user Lizzy from 2001: this was  _my world_  (Okay a world I’d sort of disowned as being silly to spend so much time on up to 5 years before I saw this episode) being used on screen as a core mechanic of the episode, so I sort of understood Ed n Harry because they were the other end of a process I was familiar with. 

I think the cross-over with this and the tulpa is fascinating because it was on these forums I was finding out about urban legends and sharing ghost stories and so on and basically seeing the sort of content that ended up being the stories in the early seasons, in a live, crowd-sourced environment anyway. It was all about learning and sharing stories, and anyone who showed up to post their own experiences and told them well got heralded as a small-time celebrity while they still had interesting things to share. The tulpa being thrown in here with the story shaping around it and growing on the internet is an interesting commentary on where the stories we tell come from and how we shape them. How the elements that we find most interesting endure, and the details change based on personal preference and the influence of the world around them (like, Ed n Harry are actually forced to write new lore about it at one point this episode if I remember correctly). Their urban legend was in its infancy, and we were seeing the birth of the story. 

Which, you know, considering the progress of the meta episodes on the show is interesting all in itself with the first meta episode being about how stories are  _born_  and even take shape at all. 

Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling and actually watch the thing. :P

* * *

Considering the last episode was Shadow where John was like “lol stop looking for me I’m right here and now you have to agree to not follow me ever again”, it seems pretty cruel to have the opening montage the same one as most of the season all “TWO BROTHERS SEARCH FOR THEIR DAD”. Been there, done that, got the horrific clawing by a shadow demon.

* * *

Although the reminder of saving people as the  _or_  to hunting things, as in, like, there’s been a contrast all season with a struggle between focussing on the myth arc and doing the hunts, kind of works: the reminder “I think he wants us to pick up where he left off” wasn’t expressly said last episode, but since they’ve been told to back off on the main story, we’re going into it with the conflict “resolved”. Hm. I can’t remember how it goes after this but I’m guessing those are heavy air quotes and I’ll keep an eye out how it continues. :P

* * *

Oh hey, Muriel’s vessel back in the old days when she was a silly teenager who wandered into haunted houses! I can’t remember if she survives but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t bode well: I’m pretty sure dies? And she’s the only girl here. This is double casting we can’t explain.

* * *

“It goes after girls. Always girls.” Is that lampshading the high fridged female death rates? I’m not sure they’re so self-aware even when I’ve accused the episode of being self-aware. :P I suppose aware of the tropes of the genre which the show itself is working in so they must know… Just at this point because it’s the trope and that’s how it’s always done that’s how they did it? *gets a headache trying to work out how intentional it would be that all the ladies die* 

* * *

Heh, the two symbols they show are the BOC symbol and the tulpa one. (I’m watching in broad daylight so if there’s other stuff to see I can’t see it: I’m hampered by the darkness of this show to  _only_  see exactly what they want me to focus on right now :P)

* * *

“Eeevil root cellar. Where Satan cans all his vegetables.”

AU where…

Okay, no. 

But I am pretty sure this is the actual first name drop on the show? Unless I haven’t been paying proper attention until this line made me laugh. 

For the sake of it being hilarious, this is the introduction of Lucifer to the show’s mythology.

 _Canon_.

* * *

Oooh there was  _already_  a dead girl here. Yay, go Muriel’s vessel! You live to die in 9x09 :P

* * *

You know, Dean’s piling stuff on his sleeping brother game is actually pretty lame. There’s even other stuff in the car he could have put on him but he just did the spoon and woke him up. Rubbish. :P

Wait, it’s actually  _canon_  that Dean nair’d Sam? I did not realise that constant fandom joke/trope had basis in canon, I thought it was just a threat because of the increasingly glorious moose mane being an obvious target for hair removal cream.

Oh man.

I paused to type that and captured a  _glorious_  pair of faces.

* * *

*returns from setting that as my desktop*

* * *

Further to the sneaky introduction of Lucifer to the show’s mythology via his vegetable preserving habits, though last episode had the daevas described as “demonic pitbulls”, “hellhoundslair.com” is the first proper name drop for those extremely important monsters.

* * *

*wanders off to superwiki to look up what the hell Dean just said and discovers BOC was playing on the radio* Oops. *has extremely patchy knowledge of their music*

* * *

Btw the line that totally baffled me was this:

> DEAN  
> Yeah. Most of those websites wouldn’t know a ghost if it bit ‘em in the persqueeter. 

I think I am justified in being baffled there, but I can guess from context.

* * *

Also re: my wasted childhood of arguing loudly about ghosts on the internet, slightly offended for 11 year old me’s honour.

* * *

Sam points out he’s looking for and pushing for them to do a MotW hunt because going their separate ways from John was a “mistake” - which he got talked into and agreed to with a manly slap on the shoulder last episode when John was there in front of him and Dean was talking him into it. After all the time Dean spent pressuring Sam into doing cases at the start of the season, Sam being the one insisting they check out stuff everywhere they go now is sort of like he’s over-compensating for his decision: he’s got to live up to what he agreed to or what’s even the point. Having left John behind he has no motivation or place to return to outside of hunting. A variation of this seems to be his default state when no other plot is around but Dean is for pretty much the rest of the show :P

* * *

Also Sam stresses the ghost is a misogynist so points to him.

* * *

That shirt that looks like the shirt I hate but isn’t that shirt (I think?) is back. It was worn by the first victim dude in Scarecrow as well.

*scowls at the shirt*

* * *

I love the reports from the kids about what they saw in there. Of course it’s a commentary on how witnesses see different things, but there’s actual an element of the literal plot mcguffin at work, where they’ve all seen the story that matters to them in a little way: for example each of them saw the girl with different coloured hair: maybe it’s scarier because each one has a close friend/cousin/girlfriend/whatever with a certain colour hair? And so the story that works best on them is the one personally tailored to what they would imagine, because what they see in there, at the smallest details, is their own  _idea_  of what they should be seeing in there.

* * *

1: this episode is all about the naff shirts

2: Sam n Dean’s cover story is that they’re journalists and the guy they’re interviewing immediately says that he’s a writer too, for his school’s lit magazine. Of course, he’s the guy who made the Hell House in the first place if I remember correctly, so he’s also the “author” of this episode, being the one who wrote the symbol and constructed the barebones mythology that the internet ran away with.

Baby’s first author character :’) They grow up so fast.

…

This guy is part of a direct lineage that results in Metatron.

* * *

I’m pretty sure at this point the show has no idea how  _much_  the internet will like what they’re doing (early days and this is only 3/4s of the way through the first season) so this is all very meta accidental foreshadowing to the actual degree to which this episode relates, truly, to the monstrosity of meta episodes which will result in things like The French Mistake and Fan Fiction.

* * *

“I didn’t think there was anything to the story.”

“Why don’t you tell us the story?”

He’s actually been bitten by his own creative efforts creating something much bigger than he ever intended - which got out of his control. He still tells them the original story, the one he knows/came up with, trying to assert some control on the story, but of course this isn’t the story, or, rather, it’s the shape of the story, the summary of the story, but not the  _full_  story because the life of the story is so much more underneath that, and being fuelled and turned into so much more without his say so. He’s peddling the original line when it already doesn’t describe what is in the “Hell House” and he knows it because he’s the one who set it all up, so there’s already odds between what he tells as the story and what the collective creative effort has turned the story into.

I mean like even if the show hadn’t quite fallen down the rabbithole it’s a beautiful metaphor for how storytelling works in the fandom space vs the original media anyway. :P

* * *

He waved around a Kansas album. I don’t think at this point anyone even  _knows_  yet? 

Like, is that actual  _foreshadowing?_ :P

* * *

Another pan over the tulpa sign painted on the wall as they come in. I just find it amusing since we kind of maybe appropriated it for much ridiculous fandom fandom stuff. :P

The sigil in itself has evolved past its original appearance as a mcguffin on a TV show where it had a very small surface storytelling reason, and became a potent symbol meaning a ton of different stuff on the internet to some people who used it to describe a story blowing out of control, and that in itself was a story that then blew out of control with the symbol all over it.

I have a headache.

I mean I always have a headache but in this case I metaphorically have a headache too. :P

* * *

*files Sam knowing stuff about what symbols are common in Satanism under the vague heading of Sam being way book smart and also the ongoing justification for why I’ve spent so long demanding witch!Sam*

And also you know, linking Sam and Satan for the root cellar AU.

Or… general foreshadowing. I don’t even know. I honestly believe as of right now that this episode somehow tulpa’d the rest of the show’s plot into existence. :P

* * *

“I hate to agree with authority figures of any kind” well yeah except for John. :P Dean tends to snap into line then…

* * *

Ed n Harry!

Dean’s mocking leaning is causing Extreme Bowlegs and I am distressed.

Sam’s mocking is more like being adorably concerned and interested in Ed n Harry’s work for Dean’s entertainment.

With Dean behind them and Sam in front they’re basically caught in a Winchester mocking sandwich. At least that’s what I’m clumsily dubbing this manoeuvre.

* * *

Okay but seriously for a second: Sam comes out the public library and he’s got a  _notebook_. A  _nice notebook_. It’s leather bound! It probably has those nice thick parchmenty pages based on my extensive research of rubbing my face on really nice notebooks.

Most importantly… He appears to have been using it to take notes!

They have a serious love ‘em and leave ‘em habit when it comes to research (okay so Sam seems to have memorised all sorts of useless sigils in all his research so he never  _needs_  to have a book with it in front of him) and basically seem to rely on their own internet search history and John’s journal for the entire show (as well as using Bobby as a research assistant later) until they have all the Men of Letters filing system to rely on as well: their own personal accumulation of personal knowledge no matter how useless is a noteworthy (ha) element of the show, but here we have actual physical proof that Sam Winchester once actually wrote a thing down in an actual designated notebook and then used said notebook to convey information to Dean. 

I mean I am a wee bit obsessive about filing but even so this should not be an earth-shaking event to see guys who habitually have a research phase almost every episode actually making a note of said research. :P

* * *

I like the girl who’s the next victim. She’s challenged to steal a jar or make out with their gross friend and she’s like “I’ll take the homicidal ghost.”

I mean she dies because of that decision but shh. Let’s ignore unfortunate implications there. :P

* * *

Poor Ed n Harry. Even Dean’s distraction technique is part of the ongoing mocking of them. Dean they are Actual Professional Ghost Hunters. Have some respect. You are an amateur. You don’t even have those night vision goggle things. You don’t even have a  _blog_. And nine years later, they will make fun of you for not having a twitter you update with your ghost hunting activities and do you know what? They are probably right.

* * *

I mean they went to a lot of trouble to write a book and you just let some random dude novelise your life and took all the credit for writing the ending.

Hack.

* * *

I know they always do complicated devils’ traps these days, but in the pilot didn’t Sam say the regular store brand pentagram was protection against evil as well? You could probably stand in one at least for a few minutes in an emergency :P

* * *

I like the addition of glowing red eyes on the tulpa.

* * *

Nooo Lucifer’s pickles! You smashed like  _every jar._

This is probably why he rose and had it in for them.

* * *

And then the Actual Professional Ghost Hunters take the fall for Winchester incompetence. *shakes head*

* * *

Weird motel time! This one is all about cows because we are in Texas.

I have driven through a little bit of Texas. There were a lot of cows.

Jared and Jensen either had a lot of fun or felt vaguely insulted by this weird fake Vancouver!Texas and all its cows in their themed motel.

* * *

Obviously I have a favourite character for this episode.

* * *

I like how the header for the Hellhound’s Lair has the effect ghosts have when they fzzzzt but Ed n Harry have never seen a ghost. Actual accidental ghost geniuses. I told you they were professionals.

* * *

And we return to that guy and get the full version of his story with the awkward moment of the writer wincing and going “I just made up some stuff how did it ever end up like thiiis?”

* * *

Hahaha and there goes any pretence the show had at keeping Sam as the scrawny nerdy one. I mean he’s not season 6 levels of buffness but still, stick him in as many drab hoodies as you like, it’s too late: you exposed Jared’s torso to the world.

* * *

Sam also has a big leather satchel like a student for his laptop. I am crying about Sam’s leather goods this episode.

* * *

Could they make Santa real by using a Tulpa sign at the north pole?

I  _need_  them to do this.

* * *

Aw more Winchester mocking. They’re so cute when they’re horrible to people. :P Same tactics they used in season 9 on that dim angel who worked for Metatron… Which was, come to think of it, right after an Ed n Harry episode - maybe if you went back to re-watch this episode in late season 9 you’d have had a weird moment of deja vu about them doing it it. :P

* * *

I hate that laughing fisherman thing on the wall and Sam is laughing disturbingly like it. 

This is a serious weekend off for them and I’m kind of crying about how few genuinely fun cases they do.

Did they rig the laughing fisherman thing to keep on laughing non-stop? Someone with good engineering skills must have had at it. *off-screen Dean being awesome since he’s the one who keeps makin’ stuff off-screen*

* * *

*bids farewell to yet another lighter*

Heh, Dean’s outside the box thinking saves them as well. Sam is not so impressed. Just wanted to make two comments about Dean being smart in a row.

* * *

*waves goodbye to Ed n Harry* Good luck being professional ghost hunters!

(I may be from the Sam school of mockery.)

* * *

Urgh, these characters don’t even look like Sam and Dean when they’re laughing all the time. WHo ARE THEY?

* * *

I um accidentally wrote a whole essay at the start so I don’t have any remotely coherent closing thoughts that aren’t to do with that. I’m guessing this is meant as light relief after last episode… I genuinely can’t remember what NEXT episode is and the title isn’t helping me remember so I guess I’d better start watching.

Because I am obscenely behind thanks to stuff like social life and sleep and stuff. :P


	18. 1x18

Or: I thought this was a season 2 episode! Wow, John was still alive when this happened. Huh. This should be interesting to poke at.

* * *

Oh no the kid is praying to have angels keep her safe. Sweetie, it doesn’t work that way. You need to be destined by some stupid plan to have them all over your case, and trust me, you don’t want that.

* * *

Aw if only closing the curtains on monsters actually worked. If it was a tulpa like last episode you could just believe that would keep you safe and it would work.

* * *

It’s never a good sign when you see the monster’s actual face in the cold open. It means it’s not the worst thing in the episode. And, uh, we know what the other point of tension in this episode is…

* * *

So we get dropped right into the Winchester Angst for the week. (well this whole episode is grade A Winchester Angst) John’s texted them some coordinates and Dean is cheerfully driving there; Sam is sceptical. It’s contrary to Sam last episode fixating on finding a case to make up for the “mistake” of leaving John behind: since these orders come from John he’s suddenly directly contrary almost I guess for the sake of it. This seems like the arguments from earlier episodes, especially Wendigo and Asylum which were also based around literally just driving out to the random grid position John left them and seeing what’s there. Except this time they’re working on a sort of uneasy but  _understood_  and agreed to situation where they’re not with John but they’re acting as his footsoldiers to go check out random cases (Sam immediately regretted that decision and was vocal about that in Hell House, but at least they all made a gentleman’s shoulder pat on it - yes I am fixating on how they communicate in manly shoulder thumps in this family).

Dean suggests John might meet them there anyway (because he’s longing for the family to get back together secretly underneath all of this *still sobbing after Shadow*) and probably doesn’t believe it anyway as he doesn’t really look like he meant it enough to get upset on John’s behalf when Sam scoffs at that.

This is setting up through this exchange about hoping John is there or not about them expecting him  _not_  to be, and, by using the coordinate method to get them on the case, makes the obvious absence of John that much clearer as the previous episodes with coordinates both had a blow up in the middle about John not being there and John was a focus of the story. And this is the episode which sets up the real solid foundation of John’s abuse through absence:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120926055718/starborndean-lexyyjacqueline-starborncas>

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/121049719083/sam-dean-john-being-absent>

I’m just skipping ahead with that one and posting links to meta and future examples because either we’re on the same page here or we’re not but this IS what the episode seems to be about. :P

* * *

“What makes you so sure?” “I’m the oldest, which mean I’m always right.” There’s a  _tragic_  amount of wobble in Dean’s voice there. They’re just talking about if there will be a monster to kill or not, but of course the core of this argument is about his faith in John and Sam is challenging him over and over about if following John’s orders is the right thing to be doing, and expressing tons of doubt over the whole thing. Dean is trying so hard not to doubt, but with Sam challenging him all the time? It seems to be wearing through a bit.

* * *

Yes I am aware that talking about doubt about orders makes Dean sound like Cas. We’ve been over this in Scarecrow, I cried, we’re not doing this again. :P Season 1 Dean = Season 4 Cas, and Season 1 Sam apparently = Season 4 Anna.

* * *

There are some really creepy trees along the road here. Mm scenery porn.

* * *

*returns from setting  _that_  as my desktop background*

* * *

Sam and Dean are wearing surprisingly similar clothes here - Sam’s in a brown jacket, instead of his nearly omnipresent season 1 hoodie, with a pale blue button up, and Dean is wearing a grey t-shirt and dull green shirt under The Jacket; considering how often Sam n Dean are dressed in red vs blue/green it’s quite noticeable when they’re on the same “team” (blue and green are a team for the sake of argument).

Considering we started with an argument it’s quite interesting to me that they’ve been allied by the costuming department for this episode.

* * *

Let’s all take a moment to reflect on Erica’s second appearance being by a playground.

Okay this one is a bit too much in the middle of things to be a useful Heaven portal, but even so. It’s nice that she’s connected to them even back here. :P

(Honestly I am going to be pretty sad about the fact we have to go an entire 9 seasons from 1x18 to 9x18 to see Erica’s face again.)

* * *

Oh, was that Erica’s full appearance here? Or does she come back later? Until proven otherwise she is the mom of that girl in pink, and also still Caroline (on a break from the hospital and maybe visiting family over here or something?) and the fact Caroline has a kid is really tragic. Of course said kid would be a teenager by the time Caroline disappeared. This is her Claire I guess. (Claire would have been this old back in season 1? Maybe?)

I feel old. I’ve been watching this show too long. :P

* * *

SAM AND DEAN HAVE NEW SUITS. They look 1000% better dressed suddenly. 

Also. I’m afraid whatever bitchface I designated as the no. 1 >:| of the season has been upstaged by the >:| over the bikini inspector thing.

I like how Dean makes ridiculous fake IDs just for the thrill of getting away with showing them.

* * *

Aah casual breaking and entering.

I’m trying to remember if there’s something else on the show that withered things on touch like that hand print, if I’m thinking of some other media, or  _my own stories_. Ugh. :P I really want to say it was this show but the more I try and work it out the more my brain is insisting I made my ‘lil wizard detective character fight something that did that. Considering he definitely post-dates my SPN watching (at least in his wizard detective form) I’m kind of worried I stole this. :P I’ve just done an about turn on having an interesting meta thought on the tip of my tongue to burying myself in shame at my idea thievery. 

* * *

Flashback time!

I do like the transition to baby!Dean. The association is made via freckles. (And there are more speckles on the table underneath the photo!) 

(This tiny freckled child looks more like a young Dean than the dorky pictures of Jensen as a kid, I swear :P I am always amused by casting making a better pick than genetics did, as they go with things that match directly to adult features, disregarding things like childhood blondeness or bad teeth or general goofiness. :P)

* * *

So baby!Dean was looking at pictures of the handprint back then as well, and John disappeared off. Unless off-screen the monster learned that John was hunting it and made a serious detour to their “safe” place, then they were already in town with it (and we see it picking on kids who live in a motel  _in the present day canon as well_ ) then I mean basically just from immediate context you have them as bait. Pending if there’s a line in here I’ve forgotten about the monster homing in on them because John was hunting it. 

* * *

I assume this is where we find out that the leather jacket was John’s as well. Not sure that’s stated in text until season 3?

It fits JDM SO much better - he must be  _enormously_  broad because even lil season 1 Jensen is still not exactly a small guy.

… You know how you can google actors’ heights? You should be able to google their shoulder width. :P

Maybe I can use trigonometry to work it out.

*increasing headache noises in the back of my mind*

It’s probably 2 different jackets - this one looks a lot cleaner and less battered which means they could make one that fits JDM snugly and makes him look huge and then give Jensen the one that he swims in and bam, John’s a giant.

* * *

“The most important thing…” “Look after Sammy.”

*cut to wee!Sam looking  _extremely_ unimpressed*

The >:| face is what they cast for here I think. :P

* * *

This motel room with the bowling motif (and kind of lego brick walls?) is so depressing for locking some kids up in for weeks on end. They should be out there bowling themselves and having fun doing kid stuff, but nope. 

There’s also a trophy on the lamp next to Sam. In John’s storage locker there are trophies from Sam as well, right? 

Anyway it’s an interesting intersection of the already established antagonistic lamp culture on the show and their depressing childhoods. Perhaps there’s more to the smashing of lamps than we thought.

* * *

“Kind of like a witch” I think they don’t actually have witches until season 3? I seem to remember checking that when I re-watched that episode a while back (It’s one of the first things in my rewatching tag :P) Anyway either Dean is wildly ignorant of what witches are or what the monster is (it seems much more on the spectrum of monstery Eve children purgatory-going monsters than a witch even with a pretty chill human form) which… Okay they’re literally talking about him  _not_  remembering the details of the case, but if the show hadn’t decided if witches would be monstery or not yet it’s pretty funny to think maybe they were planning them to look more hag-like and be a distinct species… The fact witches end up much more logical as humans who use magic just makes this conversation really funny, considering the guys show later they’re fully aware of what a witch is meant to be… Once the show does as well. 

* * *

Ah, the infamous “two queens” line. I wonder about this kid and the motel. I am terrible at judging the age of tiny humans but he can’t be more than a tween or so, right? *squints at him* I’m guessing the motel has a certain clientele and he’s got a certain level of exposure/awareness of the types who go there so seeing Sam waiting by the car it’s familiar enough to have people using the motel for hook ups that he makes the association. Otherwise his comment does come pretty out of the blue for why he’s randomly judging the sexuality of people who come there, and it kind of makes him look way more of a jerk than I realised the first dozen times I’ve strolled past this scene and shaken my head at it.

I dunno, the show wanted the joke, and they made it come out the mouth of a kid and that seems really strange to me the longer I think about it. I wonder if his mother makes some snide remarks about the types who stay there and he picked it up from her, or if manning the desk means he has the general world-weariness of someone who’s worked exposed to the public at a young age and has just picked this up from someone inadvisable.

His dubious morality from being forced to do his mom’s work while looking after his little brother is  _weirdly familiar_. Where have I seen this dynamic before? 

* * *

Lucky Charms are not an appropriate dinner, Dean. I thought John told you to look after Sammy. How did he end up 10 ft tall and buff if you just fed him Lucky Charms every meal?

* * *

I mean, not like I’m judging Sam for this because he does seem to get super smart about Latin in general, but like he did in 10x12 we have our first instance here of Sam saying a Latin thing and opening the definition of it on screen, but casually telling Dean what it means as if he just happened to know that.

I’m going to keep an eye out in case it becomes a pattern and Sam actually has completely faked his way through knowing Latin for the entire show.

(Which is very admirable all by itself.)

* * *

Oh the shtriga is apparently a witch according to Sam’s googling. I’m guessing this is just early seasons mythology at work then. :P

* * *

Bonus points for it being Albanian and not “every culture in the world.”

* * *

This is not a drill, the notebook is back. It’s not John’s journal. The question is, what  _happened_  to that notebook, or have we all seriously blanked on the fact they keep their own journal for the entire show?

* * *

Ouch. We need the ghostfacers back to absorb some of the mocking coming off Sam when Dean tells him about the old woman at the hospital. :P

* * *

There’s a star on the floor in the hospital and another one like it on the table in the motel in the flashbacks. I wonder if the sunburst clock will show up.

* * *

How  _did_  the crucifix get turned upside down? Did it just kind of flip all on its own accord? I be there’s something really sinister going on there.

Maybe Lucifer is bored while he’s stuck in the cage and he’s sending out those little whispers but all he can do at that low power is can vegetables and flip crosses.

* * *

Sam is still mocking Dean about the old lady, quite possibly multiple hours later.

* * *

Uuuugh and then the little boy (Michael?? uhoh :P) says it’s his job to look after his little brother.

And then his mom is really firm about him staying behind to run the motel when he’s like 3 years old.

He might be rude but he’s still a tragic Dean mirror and also Dean was probably extremely rude as a child.

* * *

Like a million points to Jensen for how sickened/angry/concerned Dean is over every twist and turn of this. 

* * *

It seems Sam has been wearing the Purple Dog Shirt underneath his normal button up, and alternates back and forth on covering it up.

There is a conspiracy to be had that we don’t  _know_  how often Sam’s worn the Purple Dog Shirt since this episode, just always had it covered up so we never found out.

* * *

Dean instantly knows he has to use Michael as bait, but if I remember correctly they’re pretty much right there in the room with him the whole time and don’t expect him to be the one to kill the thing. Their approach kind of really doesn’t make a case for John’s approach being the correct one.

Also if the sibling thing was so obvious why didn’t he leave them with Pastor Jim (as name-dropped in the first flashback) and quickly find the next family with one kid in hospital, one still up and kicking?

* * *

Here comes Dean’s guilt flashback then I guess? Dean it’s NOT YOUR FAULT. You were a CHILD. John gave you RIDICULOUS responsibilities.

YOU WERE SO TINY.

And John didn’t warn you this would happen.

* * *

Ugh tiny Dean reaching for the shotgun. Uuuugh.

* * *

John pls stop yelling at Dean for letting Sam out of his sight. How did you come magically bursting in the moment it was there?  _YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE NOT DEAN_.

* * *

*takes a few deep breaths*

* * *

Oh right Pastor Jim’s was  _three hours away_  I always forget how close they were to a responsible adult.

* * *

The colour is so washed out when we get back to the present we might as well still be in that gloomy flashback.

* * *

And then Dean talks about how John never quite looked at him the same again after this: this event is probably more responsible for traumatising Dean into his protect Sammy mindset even than the initial shock of the fire etc. He clearly already learned to use a gun, knew about monsters the entire time (maybe John was just terrible at hiding the truth about it from Dean to start with and got better at hiding what he did from Sam when he was more settled into the life so he could try and give Sam that pretence of a normal upbringing for a few years unlike how he ruined Dean’s childhood…) even if he didn’t seem to have a specific warning that the monster might come through the window for Sam (also if John only found out what it was and Dean did know about monsters he should have called him with further information rather than keeping Dean in a sort of information limbo where he was scared because he knew the truth but not informed enough to deal with it)… 

At this point Dean’s responsibility for looking after Sam domestically (feeding him Lucky Charms counts as mothering for the sake of argument :P) and protecting him from supernatural dangers sort of cross over for the first time probably, and this is the big traumatic first test of Dean doing huntery things around Sam. He freezes up, fails to protect him, and John comes rushing in and yells at him for screwing up. Not only that, but then between them they enter this new relationship where this incident sits between them the whole time: John’s lack of faith Dean is good enough or worthy to look after Sam because he screwed up, giving Dean a new expectation to live up to where failure makes the lesson sharper, and Dean now has this stupid need to live up to John’s expectations and with this always being between them, has an active struggle to prove he’s good and not worthless since this incident sits on him making him feel the opposite. Not only that but there’s a blame he feels for every kid who got sick and died since then, and with John being the one to text them the coordinates to come here, it’s a reminder from John that he  _still blames Dean for this_. It’s a passive-aggressive move to tell Dean it’s happening again, and Dean immediately on figuring out what’s going on, realises that this is John telling him to clean up his mess and finish the job he started in some ridiculous manly coming of age ritual where your first monster has to die before you’re worthy or something. 

Just… Ugh. Once again John skips out doing the case himself but this time it’s not even remotely implied that this is because he was too busy off doing the main quest: it’s all about him spotting this case and deciding that Dean needs to finish it up. A sign that John has not forgotten how Dean “messed up” and Dean immediately  _knows_  that John is telling him all this.

* * *

“You were just a kid.” “Don’t. Dad knew this was unfinished business for me.”

It  _shouldn’t_  be this way though: Sam’s impartial observer horror about it is the right response: Dean’s internalised all the rubbish John built up around this and so he fully believes it  _is_  his unfinished business, when, as a kid, it should never have  _started_  being his business in the first place. He shouldn’t have had the responsibility, or held the shotgun, but he did, and so he feels it’s on his shoulders.

Sam doesn’t care that he nearly died because Dean was a kid and choked up at the sight of his baby bro being eaten by a monster. When the  _victim_  of the situation doesn’t care that you nearly got him killed, there’s a problem. Sam barely registers he has a personal part in the story since he doesn’t remember it.

* * *

Ugh Dean using his trauma to get Michael to help them.

* * *

Uugh Dean’s horror when Michael knocked on the door and he turns to look: 

Why do I get the feeling he almost expected John to show up to help them with this?

Worse, he feels they just lost their chance to fix it neatly and easily and right at this point when they’re despairing about what to do next, John comes knocking on the door to tell Dean he failed and he’ll take it from here.

lololol why do I do this to myself

* * *

Okay it’s starting to get to Sam too when he sees how Michael is like “You’ll do anything to look after your little brother?” “Yeah.” “Me too.” and then Sam  _gets_ how Dean was at that age and now he looks like a crumpled up puppy and I’m getting him a blanket or something. Eesh.

* * *

I like Dean’s selfie angle.

*desperately trying to cheer these notes up*

* * *

Aargh the amount of concern for Michael when they use him as bait, and double checking if he still wants to go through with it and promising they won’t shoot him and all sorts of support Dean never got in this situation. 

* * *

I suppose Pastor Jim consecrates their iron rounds? Or is this like in season 7 when they go to the sushi restaurant to get the blessed sword? Dean going to the most knock-off place to get things consecrated and calling it good enough? I can’t remember if it was something in the show or a comment from behind the scenes about how they just casually used all this Christian stuff like any other hoodoo and spells until they walked smack into angel territory.

* * *

Sam apologises to Dean for giving him crap over following John’s orders… Which was something we saw a lot of through the whole season. Sam getting a proper demonstration of the trauma this caused in action worked better than months of being dragged around by Dean who could just look helpless and angrily defend John, so I guess revisiting their roots did some good by showing Sam the horrific childhood trauma Dean went through…

* * *

How much ammo do they have??

* * *

Dean shoots it like 3 more times after it’s definitely dead just to make sure. 

* * *

Well, grats, Dean, you got your vengeance and became a man and now you have to sweep up the crumbly witch dust all over that kid’s bedroom. Such is the life of a hero.

* * *

Sam n Dean have been wearing the same clothes for at least 2 days now.

Maybe the Purple Dog Shirt got burned for its own good.

* * *

*quietly crying about the closing note about them both wishing  _Sam_  could have a normal innocent life, but Dean never comes into the picture: Sam’s the one who was raised up for at least a few years he’d remember with a messed up life but at least no monsters, and it was Sam who got away for it… Even though Dean remembers a little of how life used to be before Mary died, his childhood was so thoroughly gutted he can’t even imagine having that sort of innocence for himself - but he could wish it on Sam because it’s a tiny bit more plausible because he spent so long trying to keep him safe and protected. :<

* * *

*looks around and double-checks I’ve tagged my John Winchester tag on this rewatch* Eh, good enough. :P


	19. 1x19

Or: is this is as close as we get to a typical rom-com episode? Probably.

(discounting 9x06 because whatever we say about it it’s actually really depressing)

* * *

I like that they took the photo for this painting, so most likely had a casting call for really creepy kids. Because like even those two boys who don’t do anything in the story have really bleak, pallid expressions.

* * *

There is something up with the beer here. I guess Dean just walked off with the drinks he was buying Brandi/y? (DO WE EVER FIND OUT HOW SHE SPELLS IT THIS IS IMPORTANT). Sam has a mostly un-drunk drink next to him (because he is ALL WORK NO PLAY again) and a different, completely untouched drink in front of him:

When he finally signals Dean to come over, he comes bearing two NEW drinks.

And starts drinking from the original first drink that was obviously his to start with, but there’s now 4 drinks on the table.

Either Dean was not so smooth as he thought and wandered off with her drink and is now in a pit of social awkwardness when he realises, OR he went to the bar to get Sam and him the first round, saw Brandy/i there and and  _immediately doubled back to get another round to talk to her_.

Dean you absolute dork.

* * *

Uh anyway Sam is doing the “omg John’s a genius finding this pattern over dozens of cases over a hundred years” thing that Dean was doing in one of the really early episodes where he was like WOW look at this case and Sam was like UGH DON’T CARE Let’s find HIM not fangirl over his hunting skillz. (Dean doubts it, Sam’s like “Dad says different” and then “no one thought to check the pattern, except for Dad!” - he speaks faster and faster and more excitedly all the way through. Calm it, Sam.)

In this case Dean doesn’t have a higher purpose to answer to to make him an annoying pain in the butt to Sam taking up the mantle of obsessive hunter that was suggested he was taking on in Hell House so instead Dean’s an advocate for fun and joy and happiness and basically everything that hunters don’t get to enjoy.

Coming off the back of 1x18 where he was emotionally reamed by the episode but sort of got his own rubbish idea of coming of age manly vengeance satisfied by getting closure on that old hunt, this does seem to be Dean casting off a weight: everything’s great: he’s fixed an old emotional wound between him and John and that spectre of disapproval isn’t lingering on him any more, Sam is here, and though John isn’t, they’ve got a working arrangement with him where he feels it’s on a better level of communication (whether it actually is or not at least they all agreed to it and John has since been ~in contact~ so…) His gleeful mood is kind of amazing, and since he’s waiting for further orders from John about the main plot and has no drive to disobey him about that, kicking off for a bit and actually being the one to resist following up a lead for a MotW case - again, picking up old work John started even much like some of the earliest cases - is showing Dean in a very relaxed state about everything, and giving him a luxury of time and happiness he hasn’t had very often. 

* * *

Dean goes back to the girls at the bar, and only takes 1 drink with him.

Sam is left with 3 beers.

I SUSPECT this is actually a ploy by Dean to get Sam plastered so he’ll have a little fun. 

You know, more examples of Dean’s clever outside the box thinking.

* * *

Hungover Dean <3

* * *

Sam being a jerk to hungover Dean <3

* * *

Okay, Dean’s issues and carelessness are bubbling over a bit more now he’s hungover because being such a jerk is just likely to get them in trouble and thrown out, and sabotage the case they’re on. I’m guessing part of his wild party attitude from the night before was about rebellion against the vague spectre of John (re: his issues with him over the shtriga thing finally resolved for Dean) and since John’s not around to be rebelled at like “yeah look at me look what I did BAM I AM THE BEST SCREW THE MAN”, any generic guy presenting as an authority figure is catching a face full of Dean at his worst. >.>

* * *

Saraaah. Heya babe.

I wonder how much older than Sam she is.

Such a rom-com entrance, though.

(Remember what I said, uh, in Shadow I think, about the brothers getting relegated to their Tall Tales style stereotype when it’s not their episode and the other is the “main” character? This is like the prime example of Dean being that guy while in a regular episode. He is all heroic later but in the social stuff,  _wow_  is he a stereotype of all his most obnoxious tropes. I mean Sam is also heroically nerding it up with Sarah in a way that makes him out to be this educated sweet counterbalance to Dean so there might be a bit of casual push and pull on their characterisation then. I wonder if Tall Tales was lampshading this characterisation writing process.)

* * *

Oh man this is a terrible motel. I’m getting second hand embarrassment just looking at it. 

* * *

Sam n Dean agree with me.

* * *

How did they get Sarah’s number?

* * *

*rom-com intensifies*

* * *

There was a horse on the wall in the Awful Motel and there’s a horse on the wall in the Awkward Date. Something about Sam getting back on the horse?

* * *

Sarah clearly knows she’s really intimidatingly posh and smart - the beer thing is probably her realising she’s come on too strong in that respect and accidentally wildly outclassed Sam (especially having seen how scruffy Sam was on their first meeting and since she would, as the local, probably have recommended this restaurant and be slightly to blame for dragging Sam out of his class comfort zone, whatever his intellectual pretensions at being educated and that equalling upper class against all other logic in how he looks/acts/who he associates with).

It works to make Sam comfortable!

Sam has  _impressive_ eye contact through this scene.

* * *

The thing about Sarah and her mum is kind of extra tragic with season 5 hindsight where we find out that what Sam does is not what Mary would have wanted for him after she died. Sarah’s moved on and trying to make something of herself, and maybe that’s a message Sam really needs right now - moving on after grief if we parallel Jess/Sarah’s mom because why not, Jess was paralleled with Mary anyway which makes it weird enough with her subtle mom role to Sam. :P I think in that parallel Jess would have wanted Sam to move on and be happy especially regarding dating after her death (it’s not like we ever hear from her again to give Sam her blessing from beyond the grave or anything). 

* * *

Also Sarah being an artist gives her a link to Jess directly since there were easels and art supplies in their apartment: Sam took art history “to meet girls” so perhaps he and Jess met there, and she was on a different track with the art and that was their cross-over point?

* * *

As a final laugh-cry example of Sam vs art and his attempts to brush with this world way beyond his reach that he keeps bumping into through these lovely clever/talented ladies, here’s a reminder of how he measures up:

It’s sort of metaphoric of how he probably feels he’s coming across in this date as well. :P

(if you didn’t think I would find EVERY opportunity and I mean EEEEVERY opportunity to insert that picture, you guessed wrong :P)

* * *

He could at least come up with one of those lies he was using at the beginning of the show - the half-truths about road trips and hunting trips and blah blah. I mean he did learn a few lessons about the truth along the way, but he just ends up being really cagey since there’s nothing he can say about himself at all. Considering how rude Dean was when they met Sarah he could at least try and explain his way around it, within the art dealer cover, but it seems like he doesn’t want to come up with any lies at all so *clams up*

* * *

*somehow gets Sarah’s help anyway*

* * *

Okay, the way Dean is sitting there sharpening a knife and stumbling over the word provenances is starting to bug me with how since Sam’s smartness is being emphasised this episode, Dean’s taking the flack for it by having to be the dummy: Sam’s doing Extreme Advanced Level Smart Stuff, and so Dean has to be written as way behind because if he can’t keep up no one can: if the audience might not be expected to know art history stuff and the word provenance offhand then  _someone_  has to not know it on screen or else you have them all chumming around like “ha ha ha look at us knowing everything” but even so this is a bit of a sad day for Dean.

* * *

Dean offers for them to stick around for Sam n Sarah again; he made the same offer last time Sam had a love interest in Hook Man, but in that case it seemed pretty insincere since his previous conversation had been with the cop driving them out of town. In this case they haven’t even done anything to get them driven out of town yet, Dean’s obnoxious behaviour with the posh people aside, so it seems to be in slightly better faith.

I think he really would kind of like a holiday and that’s pretty upsetting tbh considering how much holiday we know he gets for the next 10 years. :P

* * *

*quietly muses on John writing the journal in all-caps*

The notes Dean left in season 10 were written in all-caps as well. I don’t know how common a dude thing it is in handwriting - most of the guys I know write in completely illegible scrawl, but some compensate with all-caps when they NEED to be understood. It could just be that writing in all-caps makes for better legibility for people who enjoy squinting at the screen trying to work out what all the text says.

* * *

Yay more breaking and entering. I always love this part in an episode. :P

They’ve learned about alarm systems I see. They’re growing up so fast since Bloody Mary.

* * *

Query: why were they not attacked by a ghost while burning it?

* * *

I like how the painting is a ghost of the painting from this point on.

* * *

Hehe more worrying about getting in trouble with the law. They’re so above the law these days, and here they are freaking out about leaving evidence at the crime scene.

Which… is their crime, not them walking onto the site of a murder. :P

Heh.

I bet the ghost pick-pocketed Dean out of spite.

Looking inside random urns doesn’t seem the most logical way to look for a wallet though.

* * *

Dean’s awkward leaning is very different from his mocking leaning.

*Dean awkwards out of frame to leave Sam and Sarah alone.*

* * *

I really like Sarah’s hair bun thing. *keeps squinting at the back of her head but we don’t get a proper look*

* * *

For the record, SAM’S awkward exit stage right after seeing the painting in that scene was very reminiscent of the same rom-com fluster Dean used to back out of his conversation with Aaron.

While we’re on the subject of rom-com episodes. :3

* * *

Heh, this random local history nerd they found is so excitable, and even though he’s a dumpy bald old man, I took one look at him and just went “ _me”_.

I am both commemorating him and pointing out the main headline on his newspaper:

Of course, this becomes  _extremely_  plot relevant in 6 seasons, so I’m calling it as early foreshadowing.

* * *

I have a vague headcanon that Sarah’s dad knows exactly the history of this painting always ending up murdering the people who own it, and the fact that he can sell it over and over and make profit on it each time before it’s returned to him within the week…

Yeah, he cops to being shameless about selling it but if he had the provenances he could put together the picture too with not much hard work… 

I’m just saying.

* * *

Oh god Dean’s down to one layer, just casually. Season 1 is awful.

* * *

Sam mentions the Da Vinci Code and Dean stumbles over that too and says he’s waiting for the movie. Based on him immediately knowing what it was I think he maaay have actually read the book there, given it turns out he actually does read books. I’m going with that headcanon anyway. Eesh stop trying to dumb down my nice smart Dean.

Like, I should not be defending a guy’s right to have read the Da Vinci Code as proof of how smart they are but apparently I am. :P

* * *

Oh right, and then Dean says out loud that Jess would want Sam to have some fun so there is an overt parallel between Sarah’s mom and Jess. 

I was thinking back in the early part of the season about Dean policing Sam’s behaviour re: making him hunt to distract him from rage missions relating to Jess: now he’s been pushing him all episode to have fun and hook up and generally let go of Jess, like he’s decided it’s time for Sam to move on now. I wonder if it wasn’t so much about thinking Sam was ready as seeing him, post-Shadow, fall back into the danger signs for obsessive behaviour like Dean realised he was up against in Wendigo: now though Sam’s not all “it’s the only thing I can think about” but he was channelling his energy very intently to find a case in the opening of this episode (and in Hell House again picked a case for them as a distraction) and so his rage is turning around into serious intensity about doing the job… It’s like a scale where Dean’s always adding weights to one side only to find the other going off balance as a result. He spent the first half of the season pushing Sam into hunting, and now Sam’s had his unsatisfying closure on his desire to find John, the scales suddenly tipped sharply.

And this is basically Dean owning to policing Sam’s behaviour (in a way he wouldn’t about serious stuff - so we get the blow up in Asylum about Dean controlling Sam)… The fun of Hell House is  _already_  a grim distant memory Dean is trying to go back to to get Sam back on balance as his fun brother, and that’s just two episodes ago.

(And, of course, there’s the whole problematic thing that Dean does this all the time to Sam and does control his behaviour over serious issues too - out of genuine concern but season 8 onwards especially it gets very dark and twisted. ~Daaaaark~)

* * *

GHOST MURDER TIME.

This lady’s wallpaper looks sort of like Bobby’s wallpaper.

* * *

Aaaaaah Sarah showed up wearing a trenchcoat. 

* * *

And she changed for the next scene to a different tan jacket. 

She goes into the Really Awful Motel Room. Aw man, guys, you were actively embarrassed to be seen in this room when it was just you two, and now the Designated Love Interest is in here with you. It’s like they set up the room to be awful just to have her see how you live. :P

*missed Rom-Com moments*

* * *

I like how Dean sits at the bar in the Really Awful Motel Room to use the laptop, like yes, this is my desk and it is made of margarita glasses.

* * *

I feel like this is very telling:

* * *

I like Sarah’s braids. She still has her artful hair curly wurly bits at the front. 

It’s how I used to do my braids back when I had longer hair.

* * *

*opens mouth to talk about Dean mentioning the graveyard as a boneyard, realises I’m thinking about my own writing again, and shuts my mouth*

* * *

Sam dropping more creepy random knowledge about the doll.

Some people were wondering about him having a serial killer obsession in 10x14 but he does seem to pretty consistently know really dark things about witchcraft, weird symbols, death rituals, and so on and so on all through the show.

* * *

*Sam does the eyelash thing* *rom-com up to 11*

* * *

Well then he starts talking about anyone he loves dying and how Death follows him around and he’s cursed blah blah blah. Which I was about to comment was annoying tortured hero tropey stuff but then Sarah’s like lol nah I won’t die because of terrible supernatural things, I can look after myself, don’t worry about my connection to you getting me killed or anything like that.

*pretends like this is the last time we ever see her*

hhaaaa haha ahaaa.

* * *

“A broken heart and a tub of haagen daz.” So Sam HAS identified that he’s skirting right by rom-com territory.

* * *

Dean’s ducking into frame is FLAWLESS.

KNOCK KNOCK WHO’S T– INTERRUPTING BROTHER.

* * *

I like how Sam and Sarah just watch Dean dig the whole grave apparently.

I mean Dean is basically just the hired muscle this episode (plus source of endless drinks.)

* * *

Did Dean seriously suggest Sam and Sarah hook up in a dead woman’s house.

Dude.

* * *

The ghost realisation is a pretty great moment.

* * *

To go with Sam’s “DO NOT CRIME” warning we have Dean stuck on the other side of the door with “ENTER SCENE” mocking him:

Teehee.

* * *

The ghost is really going all out for Sam n Sarah. All the giggling and slamming doors and high breeze and creepy faces. Probably knows she’s got a real competition since they’re aware of her.

* * *

Pfft Sam being snarky about Sarah and her Useful Facts about Dolls. 

* * *

Hahaha Dean’s really on an off-day with his funny forgetting how guns work moment and then having issues making his lighter work… 

* * *

Well at least Sarah’s dad can sell the painting one more time and make a profit off it.

* * *

Nope, they’re burning it anyway just in case.

Meh, but profit, though. :|

* * *

Sarah’s hair has got more and more unravelled as the episode went on and now it’s all loose. I like her hair.

* * *

Aww she tells Sam he’s not cursed… I mean generally 99% of canon contradicts this but he had a day at least. :P

* * *

Sam’s wearing the same outer shirt/jacket as last episode so I bet he has the Purple Dog Shirt on underneath.

 _Subtext_.

* * *

Awww Sam n Sarah. :<

* * *

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. 

>:|

*sits here grumbling about her winning the marathon in Fridged for Man Pain*

* * *

Uh…

I do actually really like this episode, ignore me getting grumpy Dean!girl feelings all over it and then sulking about Season 8′s murder spree. :P

Rom-coms for everyone! *throws confetti*


	20. 1x20

I still think these old hunters were just  _really bad_  at finding vampires, and even without all the later episodes cramming vampires into every spare corner without a second thought for how they were supposedly near extinct, this was always the case.

Mostly because it’s funny about how the old guard of hunters end up looking really incompetent as a result of later canon retconning this episode’s world building. It’s not my fault the show’s go-to monster continually invalidates John’s knowledge on the subject. :P

* * *

Omg the previously is one of the first proper montagey ones putting together the story properly with random clips of their issues with John through the season. I’m so glad “hunting people saving things” is over for now. 

* * *

Since Sam’s antagonism with John is the main arc it mostly emphasises how he and John didn’t get on and how Sam was scared John wouldn’t even want to see him blah blah (Dean’s fears about John have been a bit more subtexty despite Something Wicked’s plot: without actual conversations between them it’s hard to have a definitive explanation of their respective opinions and so on to recycle in clip form). Then a clip of John being all delighted to see them, and then the bit where they agreed to split up. Basic surface level explanation of their relationship, anyway.

* * *

It cuts right to something labelled “present day” which is ominous considering that doesn’t normally need to be said. :P

* * *

I think there’s some demon traps in Elkins’ notebook.

The bartender talks probably loud enough for him to hear to the other guy at the bar about how he’s a nutjob, but then he is sitting there with a notebook full of occult stuff and papers spread out around him so I mean he is being pretty open about his occupation while presumably understanding it’s not a normal thing to do? If he’s a local perhaps he and the bartender have a bit more of an easy relationship than is suggested by her talking about him like that to another customer: he understands it’s easy ribbing on him. IDK. Otherwise she is super rude. *randomly stans for the rude bartender*

* * *

Vampires! :D (I think Elkins has like a magic vampire sense because he immediately knows before he even looks around.)

I really like her jacket… Bonus points for the chunky cross just because that seems to really amuse a lot of vampires.

The guy on her left seems a bit under-dressed though. The guy on her  _right_ seems to be laughing about that.

* * *

Ooh vampires have shiny cat eyes. Old forgotten details!

Probably annoying to CG in every time, given vampires were meant not to exist as often as they ended up doing so.

Still, technically canon so use that in your fics if you like the effect. :P

* * *

Hey, it’s the Colt! Useful plot thing for six consecutive seasons! You basically win the prize for that, Colt. It outlives pretty much everything except Sam’s mytharc or Dean’s drinking problem :P

* * *

Maybe the Colt can kill the Darkness and we’ll see it again.

* * *

We join Sam n Dean stuck in Nebraska apparently? They’re looking for cases there. For some reason it amuses me that they’re, uh,  _bogged down_  in this state. *coughs* *looks at 10x23*

It’s a slow week for supernatural shenanigans in the world at large, and Dean suggests they could go meet Sarah again for Sam: last episode he offered they could stay and he meant it pretty sincerely, and now he’s happy to derail their job to head in a direction for a person, not a case, and since that all happened last episode, it’s pretty recent backtracking. He’s sort of on holiday still it feels like, or at least, enjoying the idea of having a certain amount of freedom. They’re not trying to find John and he hasn’t told them to be anywhere, so he’s got the option to say they drive in a non-hunting-related direction. They are both discussing the possibility of cases and looking for them, but the  _need_  to be hunting, for distraction or to give their life meaning and direction, is fairly low on Dean’s agenda.

Sam turns down the idea of seeing Sarah again with “Yeah, I don’t know, Maybe someday. But in the meantime…” He still has more of a drive to find meaning via hunting: he liked Sarah but Sam’s an all or nothing guy, in or out: his two major (non-apocalypse-starting) relationships both involved Jess & Amelia’s total obliviousness to hunting, and Sarah knows, but she represents a higher class life, and to Sam relationships mean stability and escape; right now there’s open plot threads in front of him, and he doesn’t want to just hook up with Sarah (even if Dean is offering an arrangement where they drive that way regularly, negotiating an external relationship into their working relationship (gosh how healthy!)) so this option is off the table to him completely from many angles. The “maybe someday” is a magical time when he’s not hunting and everything is resolved and there’s world peace and so on and so forth - he misses his chance with her as that doesn’t come for like 8 more years, and he doesn’t think to find her, and bumps into Amelia instead. (And Sarah is already probably engaged by that point anyway :P)

… I am kind of sad about this because I really like Sam x Sarah after last episode… :P

Anyway the “meantime” is a new case that Sam finds; basically he picks hunting over dating quite obviously here, and even though Dean is not looking for an out, but more of enjoying his scant available down time (and over the last few episodes we’ve got an idea of Dean squeezing in pleasure around work), Sam is not thinking of it in the same way: it’s not a lifestyle at the moment the way Dean is living it, it’s a mission.

* * *

“Some kind of bear attack and now they’ve found signs of robbery.”

Yeah, but did you consider:  _kleptomaniac bears_.

Lizzy’s ongoing struggle with the fact bears are not the MotW in every episode. (If you remember my Wendigo review you’d know that comment isn’t out of the blue.)

* * *

Dean’s ongoing mission to memorise John’s journal is going well on the other hand.

* * *

Like this is just the address page basically, barely nothing immediately around it that would be any use (like, the other text about monsters and symbols isn’t so cluttered up against it that he would cross it when reading unless he used the name as kind of a heading or chapter title for the page in his recollections - aside from casually wondering once who it was there’s no point remembering the name as it’s just a contextless name with no lore or story attached). 

So Dean has not only re-read all the journal a fair few times already, but he clearly must have sat there studying the random names and numbers in it, trying to put together a picture or speculating on who they were (without just calling to ask, you know, even when John was legitimately missing and rushing through his contacts list might have helped :P). He’s either got a photographic memory from looking at this just once (we do have other indications he has a great memory and of course excellent pattern recognition) or he’s made a depressingly thorough study of the journal almost just for the personality and character clues as for the actual useful content in it.

Aw, Dean.

* * *

Mm scenery porn.

* * *

Hehe, nice old computer, Elkins. He seemed pretty serious as a researcher - of more than just vampires - and this is our first real serious moment of them not cataloguing all the information he has here. There is plenty of research here that would probably be really useful, and it always stings when they leave stuff behind but in this case, I mean, look, just scooping up this surface stuff you can SEE would probably be an advantage to them, as scholars of the supernatural.

Call yourselves freakin’ Men of Letters. *sulks*

* * *

(I have a slight information collection problem in my own life I’ll admit.)

* * *

Okay so Dean picks up Elkins’ journal at least. 

 _At least_. Ugh. :P

* * *

I think that’s John in the shadows outside? I can’t remember exactly how they get back in touch. If so it’s another instance of him being framed in shadows watching them: add in his appearance in Shadow and Azazel mistaken for John in the Pilot and that’s 3 times as a pattern. :P

* * *

Dean continues to do that thing where he’s really smart, spotting the letters scratched into the floor and sketching over them.

Props to Elkins for having the presence of mind to scratch it into the floor while in the process of being eaten alive.

* * *

Haha oh my god John comes back by literally just popping up when they find the letter, like he was summoned by saying his name, and he just taps on the window and hops in the back of the car like they do this every day. Such an inglorious end to their search. (I know I know the search ended months ago. Shh.)

* * *

Wait so Elkins dies and John comes haring up here to see what’s what (because I assume what he knows about the Colt not because of personal feelings I guess?), but  _Dean_  gets fatally injured and is on death’s door and John never so much as budges? *sulks*

*pre-emptively adds my ‘not a John Winchester fangirl’ tag and he’s had 1 line of dialogue*

* * *

“Why didn’t you come say hi?” “I had to check you covered your tracks.” John is concerned but he also turns this into a thing where he makes their re-introduction about them learning a lesson. He basically reveals he didn’t immediately step forward to say hi because he was too busy being a strict mentor. As a non-family trainer who raises up hunters dispassionately to make sure they do a good job, he’s not half bad. As a dad? Ehhhh. No. :P 

He concedes they were good at hiding their tracks but the whole thing is he’s more concerned about this than checking on their emotional wellness. Yes, he doesn’t want them dead and his concerns and behaviour does count for helping them survive (except for the times he uses them as bait…), but he finds no time to trust them to already be good enough to treat as equals rather than students, despite having unleashed them into the world and ceremonially handed over the mantle back in 1x01. 

And of course there’s the suggestion (more overt in Something Wicked) that doing their job and doing it well gets his approval above anything and this is the only emotional support they get from him, so him checking how they did covering their tracks is probably the  _most_  emotional support he can give them: a “good job”. 

* * *

Wow, John withholding relevant information about the Colt. “It’s important, that’s why.” He already knows what it does, and Elkins didn’t tell HIM about it until after he was dead and then John just carries on not explaining what it’s for and why. 

As a bonus reinforcement of this “withhold information for your ~own good~” attitude: “vampires? I thought there was no such thing.” “You never even mentioned them, dad!” “I thought they were extinct.” OH GOOD well they’re not and, you know, again, like with the shtriga or whatever, sharing at least some  _basic information_  even in passing or with the hope it never comes to much, would have been  _really beneficial_. I know, I’m getting annoyed about them not having information all over the place, like with how they didn’t scavenge Elkins’ place for info, but it’s really annoying me how there’s this culture of knowing exactly enough to get by and always just being told the relevant info at the last possible minute, and here’s John demonstrating it twice in one go.

Grrr. (This goes for other instances in the show that don’t relate to John that also annoy me, but clearly this is his influence/legacy :P)

* * *

Vampire lore! Just upfront, “our vampires aren’t like your vampires.” (”Well they kind of are, but like, not.”)

* * *

I was about to say something about the guy’s shirt but then the girl in the car said something about the shirt, and now I think terrible shirts are like just a feature of the early seasons, just like the Awful Motel from last episode. They know how naff this looks but dammit they’re using the terrible shirts and bad motels anyway. :P

* * *

Thinking of, John and the boys are at a motel with a very strong hunting lodge theme (like the one from Nightmare).

Sam and Dean are both sleeping fully dressed with their boots on while John sits up listening to the police scanner. There’s a weird sense of broken roles here just from that: the kids asleep (but dressed and ready to fight) and the parent awake but not watching over them exactly, despite sitting angled to face them: his focus is on the task.

* * *

“How do you know?”

“Just follow me, okay?”

Yet more withholding information. The boys are in an informational void that John is constructing so they have to rely on him every step of the way (I’ve given up and started calling them ‘the boys’ for this episode I guess because right now they are in the role of the kids, and this is their awkward family vacation.) They’re dependant on him as their leader, again, this kind of rushing through the case emphasises their position as the footsoldiers that he needs along to help him complete the case, not equals sharing it with him.

* * *

“Vampires. It gets funnier every time I hear it.”

yEAH Dean you’re not going to have the last laugh* on this one I’m afraid.

*okay no one gets the last laugh with Dean/Benny because it’s  _tragic_.

* * *

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have gone over with him.” 

“Oh, don’t tell me it’s already starting.”

I’m with Sam in this argument, for the most part. This is all pitting him against both Dean and John: John in the sense that he has to rebel because he has the slightly more outside viewpoint of their family, having spent some time cut off, and against Dean in the sense that Dean is still conditioned to follow the family line. He may have been idly rebelling over last episode and the opening minutes of this one, but the moment John was back in the picture Dean has fallen into line and will unquestioningly follow him - as John literally says in the last scene with the “just follow me, okay?” He has a clear role at the head of the family, as far as Dean is concerned, and despite their own safety potentially being threatened (as in the historical shtriga case where John didn’t give Dean all the info needed to protect Sam) by not knowing all the information, he won’t ask questions, and will even respect John telling them to stay back while he goes to look at the crime scene, or refuse to explain how he has been tracking the vampires. 

Sam is briefly appeased by showing him a vampire fang to at least prove they’re not on a wild goose chase. This is not exactly all the information they need about the situation.

* * *

Dean is apparently reading some information about vampires as they drive along. 

Query: why was this not in John’s journal, when he included stuff which he’d never seen at other times and leads to cases he never got around to dealing with? He thought vampires were extinct, not that they didn’t exist at all, contrary to Dean’s belief, so if he’d encountered lore about them (and there was random lore about various monsters in the journal) which he would have as Elkins was vampire-focussed and an old hunter mentor of John’s so would have taught him stuff like this upfront and I fail to see how he WOULDN’T mention vampires at some point and was presumably how John learned about them… All this and he never wrote it down? Perhaps Elkins gave John a similar “nah don’t bother I killed them all” speech (well I think it was between he and Gordon that vampires got so closely exterminated?) full of this idea that the more experienced and wiser person had full control of the situation. And of course the guy who thought he’d dealt with vampires enough to say they were extinct and inspire John to apparently not write anything down about them ever got killed by vampires for his hubris.

Hm. :P

* * *

Oh and then Sam and Dean have the argument where all this information withholding bubbles over:

> SAM  
> (Unable to help himself) It’s just the way he treats us, like we’re children.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh God.
> 
> SAM  
> He barks orders at us Dean, he expects us to follow ‘em without question. He keeps us on some crap need-to-know deal.
> 
> DEAN  
> He does what he does for a reason.
> 
> SAM  
> What reason?
> 
> DEAN  
> Our job! There’s no time to argue, there’s no margin for error, all right? That’s just the way the old man runs things. 
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah well maybe that worked when we were kids but not anymore, all right. Not after everything you and I have been through, Dean. I mean, are you telling me you’re cool with just falling into line, and letting him run the whole show? (looks at Dean challengingly)
> 
> DEAN  
> (Giving Sam a long look; weakly, as if he’s convincing himself) If that’s what it takes.
> 
> Sam shakes his head.

“if that’s what it takes” obviously being in reference to Dean’s heart-wrenching confession in Shadow about just wanting them to be a family again. If these poor working conditions are the only way the three of them can work together (because John calls the shots and these shitty working conditions are how John wants to do things) then Dean will go along with them because it’s John, and he’s family, and Sam’s still there right now and  _can we all please not argue and just be a family again_?

Ugh Dean you are so broken. The worst bit is that Dean seems to know it, but he’s too desperate to scrape together any support and shape of a family with the last little fractured bits of it sellotaped together that he will put up with anything. It helps that this is all of course how he’s conditioned to be: acting as John’s footsoldier without question is his default state and I think it probably pains him that Sam doesn’t have that same comfort of being able to do as he’s told, which is part of where the sparks come from: Sam of course can see the situation a little better (I mean he doesn’t  _react_  to it sensibly by being so angry and confrontational about it) so his anger is that Dean just goes along with it, without all the sympathy to his situation, as he’s only begun to piece together tiny parts of the depths of Dean’s conditioning along the way. 

(edit to add: also, the line about how it was when they were children? Wow. Sneaky little commentary on their childhood there.)

* * *

ANyway. Vampires.

I’m sure there’s nothing grossly suggestive about him forcing the beer bottle into her mouth.

…

Despite being evil Luther is kind of sensible. “Revenge isn’t worth much if you end up dead.” 

Uuh yeah, thanks, creepy vampire boss. Appreciated. :P

* * *

Never over how Dean lets Sam drive right when he’s most annoyed with John. Like what if he’d decided to just turn around and drive off into the sunrise instead? “Nope, you were right, let’s go visit Sarah again, the vampires can wait.” :P

(Well he probably let Sam drive to make him feel like he still had some agency when they were in this situation where they had no agency but Dean was happier to have no agency than Sam for the above family-together reasons.)

Needless to say this was not a great decision.

* * *

They really don’t have normal family road trip arguments.

This didn’t really resolve anything, just yelled a bit. I suppose got it out of their systems enough to not be actively wrestling while hunting vampires.

Man, Christmas must be fun with them.

* * *

Oh, okay, I was wondering if I was imagining it before they ate the male captive but it seems like all the vampires are bi because that’s more evil or something. Woop.

Love me that implication that being bi is an inherent part of being evil.

* * *

Oh, and  _then_  John decides to tell them about the gun.

I mean they were all in a motel together a while back with nothing to do but sleep and wait, but naaah not the time.

* * *

I do find it amusing that they’re going to all this trouble to get the gun, and it already has Dean’s fingerprints on it, historically,  _twice_.

* * *

Sam should have just told Colt when he went back and met him to make like 10 more of the guns and bury them at strategic locations.

Yeah yeah, John’s voice over is all “Halley’s comet” and blah, this probably was a once in a lifetime chance to make a gun  _that_  magic.

* * *

I like how there’s a mysterious “they” in this story. I mean there’s some sort of unspoken hunter culture here that John tapped into with all this grizzled old hunters, and Sam n Dean never seem to get that same sort of folkloric hunter history no matter who they meet up with. And old hunters all seem to be dead hunters these days, especially since so many got killed through the apocalypse arcs especially.

* * *

Pfft Dean being a dork walking into the vampire hammock.

* * *

That line about finding the nearest funeral home will never not be funny. And Dean’s “You WHAT!?” reaction. Aw Dean I think that actually shook his faith in John more than anything so far, for a few seconds. :P

* * *

It was probably a terrible idea to leave Sam n John alone together.

* * *

I mean I think I recall this conversation ending up okay between them, but still, given how they were last time they had a “casual conversation” that was a pretty big act of trust from Dean that they wouldn’t literally kill each other…

* * *

Ahaha the college fund story always tears my heart out.

I mean, John is tragically self-aware here at least of how he failed to raise them properly; he is a complex character and it’s not like he doesn’t have some badass/funny lines and do stuff which is good and heroic - it’s just all been at the cost of the emotional well being of our main characters in a way which affects basically everything they do negatively somehow. I get that this is the bit where if you’re going to defend John Winchester it’s this story you lean on especially for the emotional side, as he’s offering up his genuine emotional side of this battle and it is a sympathetic moment where we get a tiny glimpse into a broken man. The problem with John is not that he was awful intentionally or anything, he just consistently made terrible decisions regarding their emotional well being and was in such a bad way himself that he couldn’t be the father they needed. And that resulted in emotional abuse and neglect and an upbringing which conditioned them and trained them to be soldiers and forced them into a battle that, okay, higher powers wanted them fighting and John just kind of unwittingly provided the exact environment needed.

… Never going to stop me from calling out his various specific actions and general character flaws for the ways they messed up his kids because no matter how helpless he felt about it all, there were still  _plenty_  of moment by moment decisions and actions which he could have gone another way on and even if we have his reasoning, doesn’t make it  _good_  reasoning.

Pretty sure now they put in Something Wicked before this episode and had it while he was still alive so you can’t get  _too_  comfortable with the character. Also, his relationship with Sam vs with Dean is very different and this is him making different sort of effort with Sam that he doesn’t feel he  _needs_  to with Dean, because he feels he has Dean’s loyalty and respect (as, well, he calls himself their drill sergeant) and so even though that relationship is completely fucked up, it doesn’t need maintaining in the same way as making an actual emotional gesture to Sam, the one who needs this sort of thing to keep him in line, because orders don’t work outright. 

Augh I can’t write 3 paragraphs of sympathy before I’m off again. :P

* * *

I like how they went to the trouble of setting up an elaborate ploy: Dean knew he was luring vampires, the vampires had their scent so knew it was them. And he still popped the hood of the car and they acted out multiple lines of their dodgy porno or whatever was going on there.

* * *

“Don’t really stay with a chick that long. Definitely not eternity.”

*makes the squeaky video being fast forwarded noise*

“blah blah everyone you love will be dead, except me, blah blah we’re totally going to be immortal boyfriends forever.” Hahahaha I did not expect to find Destiel feelings in this episode. Hahahahaaaaa. Who am I kidding, they’re everywhere all the time no matter what.

Never forget that time when Dean was immortal and Cas spent a lot of time thinking about how they’d be immortal together, like, actually sat and contemplated the fact they’d outlive everyone and still be close enough that Cas would be there when Dean turned again.

Hahaaaaa.

(Sorry for the paraphrasing, I haven’t watched 10x22 since the week it aired but that was the gist of it :P)

* * *

Oh hey they used crossbows. I mean, Dean didn’t, and the line I was laughing about was him valiantly defending learning bow hunting, and then he was the bait (why  _did_  John wait long enough for Dean to get assaulted before shooting?) so he never got to use it. Although I suppose he was also defending the fact Sam had to learn it and  _Sam_  used a crossbow.

I don’t even know.

* * *

Heh, and then after all the bonding they did John still won’t give in and let Sam help.

…

“That’s a bunch of crap”

*Sam’s brain screeches to a halt* *John’s brain screeches to a halt* *probably certain eavesdropping angels’ brains screech to a half* *everyone looks at Dean standing up to John*

o.0

* * *

Oh and then John says he’s on a suicide mission and we’re back to the vampire being more sensible about revenge than John.

Dean defends them getting revenge as a family as the more healthy option.

I am PRETTY SURE at this point John knows whatever it was he knew about Sam (I mean Home had him knowing about Sam’s powers already) so he’s  _still_  not telling them pertinent information because it scares him or he doesn’t want to drag it all out or he thinks killing Azazel will mean it never is a problem or  _something_  to justify not telling them, but it means they’re having this argument  _still_  on the grounds where John’s like “Because I said no” and giving the worst reasons for it and because he’s holding the knowledge back which will stop him from having another opinion, Sam and Dean arguing with him have no position to actually persuade him.

Ugh. :P 

* * *

Dean is used as the jump scare on a vampire. Not going to be the last time he’s treated as the monster.

* * *

Oh! Dean used a crossbow as well! Okay!

* * *

Luther’s death was pretty epic. I think we saw his soul zap off to Purgatory and everything. :P

* * *

Well John’s pretty pleased the gun works at least.

* * *

Heh another moment where Dean takes a contrary stance to John and Sam gives him the panicked “did I just hear that?” look and Dean looks like a rabbit in headlights but he stands his ground. *pats him on the head*

* * *

Aaand the episode resolves with John allowing them in on the mission to go kill Azazel. Which, I don’t think they even know he has yellow eyes yet? He’s still just “the demon” or whatever. Although I suppose it’s a next episode problem, they’re going to go into that one without all the info, just because we know John doesn’t tell them whatever he knows about Sam - in fact, he  _never_  tells them exactly what it is he knows. He could have an  _incredibly_  messed up idea of what the special children were about if he got it all off the hunter grapevine and the demons were so careful about concealing their plans step by step… For all we know he’s got the same bizarre notion as later hunters that he’s accidentally spawned the literal anti-Christ.

* * *

But yeah, teamwork. Family. Yay. 

Dean’s never going to get the beach episode at this rate. :P 


	21. 1x21

*accidentally plays 1x22* “Oh wait this isn’t right Carry On Wayward Son is on the second to last episode of season 1” *dashes back to the DVD menu* *puts on 1x21* “Hang on wait why is Carry On Wayward Son playing I’m on the second to last episode?” *goes back to the DVD menu*

…

*looks directly into the camera*

* * *

Oh my god the original montage is great. *watches it twice with careless disregard to how many times I’m going to hear the song over the summer*

I like the implication that Meg could have been Jess’s killer by the cut here. :P

They fought so many  _ghosts_  this season.

I like the line about hearing voices when dreaming put to Sam and his visions.

* * *

Hey Pastor Jim!

Demon!Meg has really stepped up her leather jacket game and joins the special club of awesome red leather jacket people on the show - her, Ruby, Dean… :P

I’m just saying, it’s nice he never got prejudiced about red leather jackets after so many sexy demons wandered around in them in the early part of the show.

… my bitterness about the fate of the Purgatory Jacket is a story that will echo through the ages.

* * *

The way demon!Meg comes to him acting like she needs advice though… 

Pastor Jim says, “I like to think salvation was created for sinners.” which is another really good line but perhaps not one that should apply to demon!Meg. :P 

BUT we don’t know she’s a demon yet, do we?

DEMON EYES!

* * *

I like how they just totally handwave the demons on hallowed ground thing. I honestly don’t know if they ever have minor league demons on hallowed ground in the show. Off the top of my head, Alastair in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Lilith and Azazel in the nunnery in 4x22, and Abbadon in the church in 8x23? For all we know it’s true and normal dull demons can’t go in churches but we never see it. :P Just all the exceptions to the rule.

* * *

“You throw like a girl” says the girl. *angry Charlie noises from 10 years down the line*

* * *

Demon!Meg edging around a devil’s trap on the floor before the show actually tells us what they do.

Remember in 9x23 when Dean very carefully didn’t step in the one in the dungeon? :P

* * *

Poor Pastor Jim. 

It’s not healthy to know the Winchesters.

* * *

John’s mood board wall is heavy duty. I think apart from tipping out the contents of a google image search for reapers onto the table at one point Sam n Dean have been pretty resistant to mood boarding so far.

“this is everything I know”… except for the stuff he left behind in 1x01.

* * *

You know there’s a ton of kids out there with demon blood which were seeded around the time of season 1. I mean the special kids were pretty much activated by Azazel but still that is a thing that happened to these other kids.

I find it fascinating that he had this rolling plan going of seeding these kids like he actually was setting up for a round two if this didn’t work. Like yeah, the Winchesters were ideal and kind of got too involved ANYWAY so kind of accidentally turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy through multiple steps of being too up in the business of the universe but still. Didn’t have to be them. :P

* * *

Okay no they definitely had mist machines on the side of the road for these exterior shots in season 1.

* * *

Apparently John Winchester answers the phone while driving. *has already found my reasoning to use the not a fangirl tag*.

* * *

I mean like if you were trying to pretend like maybe he was just driving when he got the phone call about Dean dying so he couldn’t answer the phone until later, that has now been debunked by this fact.

*totally not just trying to pile on reasons to dislike him or anything* :P

* * *

Sam’s hair is getting puffier and more wing-y at the sides. Dean is getting more scowling. We’re moving onto their season 2 personalities now. :P

* * *

I like the demonstration of the way they work. John puts on a fake hospital badge, Sam continues taking notes in  _his notebook yes that notebook_ , and Dean apparently flirts for the information.

Aaah Sam dropped his notebook while he was having the vision.

Nope! It was safely tucked under his arm and is back in his bag - it lives to serve another day!

* * *

I am still not over Sam wearing a polo shirt. He is a scruffy student so much this season, and I am sad that part of him disappeared.

Look at him with his backpack and his jacket.

* * *

Monica says it’s like Rosie can stare at people and read their mind. I remember there was a neat post I saw ([and blabbered all over](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120771384078/trai-all-bangingpatchouli-spangelbanger-i)) about the special children being picked for pre-existing magic powers (e.g. Sam would already have had a very mild inclination towards this or maybe even have the potential to be a natural witch by Rowena’s new rules). I guess this may just have been a throwaway line to make you aware there’s something odd about the baby, but I like to think there is some basis in them all being actually a little bit magic. :D

*quietly rooting for witch!Sam  _still_  against the continued issues of current canon making that a really dubious and contentious choice for him most likely*

* * *

The other reason, of course, that Rosie has a 1000 yard stare is because she is a doll:

I feel like this is the real case that needs solving here, forget what Azazel is up to. Brrr.

She transforms into a human baby on closer observation.

* * *

I love Monica’s hair. She’s out in rainy damp weather and it’s all glossy and curly *envious*

* * *

I feel like Sam being forced to have visions of creepy clowns is just  _cruel_.

Azazel is a dick.

* * *

I wonder if there is some sort of sacrifice element of the death of the mothers here - it doesn’t happen for  _all_  the children and only seems to happen when the mother interrupts Azazel - but perhaps when it  _does_  it is kind of part of the process given it always happens in a very specific ritualistic way and, for example, Azazel didn’t string up John too when he interrupted him killing Mary for interrupting but let him basically escape unscathed. Especially if all the deals were done by having the mothers be the one to sign over the babies then perhaps there was some other level of sacrifice there…

* * *

I hate this shot:

Well I mean it is a fantastic shot but Dean n John sitting and dressed like that. Uuugh. And Sam off in the foreground in the red vs their blue, with this huge gulf between them, even sitting beyond the partition in the room so that’s sort of boxing him off (again he is in the greener space, and Dean n John are in the redder space as well, which happened a couple of times in Faith).

Thinking of the panels there - look what came back in 10x23: <http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/121340248148/f-ckyeahfutbol-obsessionisaperfume>

* * *

As John levels the accusation about not calling him about the visions, Dean coincidentally gets up and moves over into the kitchen area with Sam to get himself a coffee refill.

Aw Dean x coffee. The OTP of season 1 but they go through some real rough patches over the years as he gets into a bad relationship with alcohol. :(

* * *

I love love love how Sam n Dean both look incredulous but it’s DEAN after all this falling in line and with pretty much  _no warning_  this episode, although a little bit of rebellion last episode, that immediately moves back towards John all angry and  _call you?_

You tell him, Dean. :D

John has to give him that one. I think this is an actual instance of airing grievances and being heard and having an actual adult resolution. Possibly because it was Dean arguing back not Sam. Sam’s usually kind of got a point but gets way too angry and John sparks badly off Sam’s tone anyway. Dean sounds angry but John’s so used to him falling in line I guess open disagreement from Dean is so surprising he has to listen and doesn’t push back.

* * *

Thinking of how demon!Meg got right under their skin in Shadow, she tells Sam “let the grown ups talk” while John is reaching for the phone anyway… Enforcing that he is the adult in the situation without knowing this is what Meg is saying on the other end of the line. Always pushing Sam’s buttons. 

* * *

Ugh John getting all choked up about wanting it to be over and for them all to have a normal life. After Something Wicked when Sam and Dean were talking about how they wished Sam had a normal innocent life, John says he wishes Dean had a home… It’s aaawful. Dean doesn’t even know how to want that for himself: he’s so tangled up in this life now… His happy moments and down time come in between cases and he’s adapted and learned to be what he is, not ever dreaming outside of this life. And then John suggests that killing Azazel means that will be it - it will be over. But of course, season 2 ends with them doing the exact same “we have work to do” thing as the  _start_  of season 1 when it was Sam’s problem not Dean’s… But look forward to Dean having a home in the Bunker and be even more sad. :P I mean even that has its threats and violations, but trying to imagine this little season 1 broken bird being  _remotely_  settled or being able to understand the idea of having a home? 

Oh god  _Deeeeeean_. :(

* * *

(Yes that was an “ugh John” that wasn’t about John being awful. :P I’m actually very sad along with him here; he knows the damage done to their lives, and how this revenge mission has become everything; he even recognises (especially with the argument before the phonecall about him not being there for them) that he’s contributed to a lot of this. He was the one who started the revenge mission: none of the other families became hunters, ONLY John so far as we ever meet any of them. All the rest seem to think it was a strange but natural event. Was John predisposed without realising it because of his MoL heritage or something? Some faint memory from Henry making him just a bit more canny to the possibility of the supernatural even if it was only way back in the depths of his mind? Anyway, he recognises here that he has fucked up their lives completely and he’s exhausted and seeing a way out at long long last…)

* * *

It’s still ridiculous he has shuriken in the back of his truck though.

* * *

I can’t decide if it’s good or bad John letting go of the mission a little and telling them it’s their fight now - he started it, but he’s going off to do the suicide mission instead (symbolically sacrificing himself to the mission even if he does actually survive). I mean it’s more weight on the boys’ shoulders, but on the other hand John is showing them an example of  _not_  letting revenge drive you past the point of logic i.e. he is concerned enough for which of his hunter friends will be next that he will step back and not make being the one to kill Azazel the be all and end all of his existence.

Buuut still. Handing over your revenge mission isn’t exactly healthy for the people you hand it too, even if you try to lead by example it gets undermined by the fact you’re still telling them the priority is killing the demon and to get it done don’t waste bullets blah blah.

III dunno. I’m giving this John Winchester sympathy thing a whirl.

* * *

There’s a parallel to this moment in 10x07 with Cole and Dean when they’re handing Dean’s gun back and forth to bookend their conversation. I don’t know if they were just calling back to this or what visually, but it’s a [very similar moment](http://dustydreamsanddirtyscars.tumblr.com/post/103634011451/10x07-girls-girls-girls-that-was-your-story). (gif source to those down there) When Cole hands the gun back to Dean, it’s even the same hand positions in reverse, plus the gratuitous touching:

And in the original hand over when Dean gives him the gun you can see Cole’s wedding ring is on the wrong side?

But looks like Dean’s hand in this moment.

Cole was a massive parallel to the Winchesters in general, sort of doing triple duty as a mirror, but the John side of things was pretty clear in his home life, while his actual mission to kill Dean sort of had him more in the Dean role as he was avenging a parent. Obviously this episode right here is about John handing over the right to vengeance to Dean, and in the 10x07 example Dean hands over his gun to Cole to talk him out of his vengeance.

I dunno, just something that caught my attention, regarding all the John Winchester subtext in season 10: a little detail we might have missed before? 

Anyway, considering how this scene went, basically Dean giving Cole his gun was sort of paralleling this, except that Dean had to have known already at that point that if he was shot he’d just come back as a demon, so it was way more for Cole’s own good to talk him out of shooting him. STILL he might have remembered this gesture of faith from John or something, and might have been more about giving Cole the emotional boost that Dean got from this scene about having the potential means for vengeance handed to him (even if he ultimately didn’t get it this episode) to make Cole listen, than to seriously suggest he should kill him.

Because of course that would be a really asshole thing to do to let him kill you just to be a demon again… Got to work on the in-the-moment symbolism rather than the logical over-thinking of the end results of the paths that moment could have taken. :P Hehe.

* * *

Anyway back to the season 1 drama.

* * *

Isn’t that the same bridge (that’s in every episode) that Sam n Dean meet up again at after the events of 5x04? Kinda symbolic about John going one way and in that other moment the (remains of) the family gets back together.

* * *

Aah John’s badass holy water ploy. Damn but if that isn’t one of the coolest things this season. :D

* * *

“Could tell them the truth.” “Naaah.” Aw man. They have learned the wrong lesson from this season. :P The truth thing has come around a lot to say you should tell it this season.

* * *

Uuugh the cinematography is pretty in the bit with demon!Meg walking past in the foreground and John on the roof.

John is the man in the shadows again, as he has been all season in every appearance, and as he remains in the subtext of the show for the entire rest of its run. :P

Have a gratuitous screenshot.

* * *

UGH and the beautiful shot of John dropping the rosary into the water tank. Uuuugh.

* * *

Sam n Dean have the same conversation about finally being there that they had before going into the fight in Shadow… Do they  _not_  have the conversation about eventual revenge finally being in their grasp the time they actually manage to do it? I feel like this conversation is an omen of failure.

* * *

Okay so that other random demon who shot demon!Meg might be a  _bit_  more responsible for her death than how she was thrown out of the window by the daevas? Which was also something she sort of did to herself since she was controlling them the whole time. So demons are pretty much totally responsible for Meg’s death on all fronts.

* * *

Oh my god I can’t believe those dweebs are trying to call John while he’s busy doing a dramatic hostage exchange with the gun. They have no chill. John’s WORKING.

* * *

I am endlessly amused by Azazel causing massive environmental effects with his presence, okay, yeah, weather disturbances we’ve gone over, but apparently demons fuck with radio reception too? Can you IMAGINE demon!Dean finding out the radio in the car doesn’t work any more when he’s near it? Probably why he looked so grim driving at the end of 10x01 tbh.

* * *

Ugh self-fulfilling prophecies abound, with them causing her to go into the nursery.

* * *

Omg, an instance of a demon disappearing on screen!!!! *sighs* *pauses the episode* *loads up a video*

Okay, no, not the same effect as Cain doing it. He kind of just mirage-d out, while Azazel disappears more in puff of smoke.

I think those are the only two on-screen times we see that?

* * *

~drama~

* * *

And now Sam’s broken because he didn’t get revenge. Dean is getting really fed up of his family being determined to go on suicide missions. He can’t get hold of John who went off on ONE suicide mission, and Sam’s grumpy because Dean wouldn’t let him run into a burning building to complete  _his_  revenge mission.

Dean randomly has his head screwed on saying it’s not worth dying over: echoing the words of the surprisingly sensible vampire last episode who said revenge wasn’t worth it. Wow. Dean being paralleled with the monsters. :P

(Wow, the monsters having the sensible POV first :P)

* * *

Heh, Dean uses Sam’s words on the bridge in the Pilot to try and calm him about Mary (and Jess now) being gone, and instead of Sam being like “lol yeah I said that once to you” he does the exact same shove Dean into a wall reaction Dean had when Sam said it to him. Lol lol.

The journey they go on… One gets to a certain point, the other has reached the opposite end of the scale. Dean has learned the True Value Of Family from having this brief little stretch of 2 episodes with them working as a team again (see above: them tag teaming the hospital for records almost with the air of a jaunty montage of them going about the family business) and had basically briefly accomplished all his goals despite them trying to rip it down at every opportunity by leaving or saying how they want to go back to college when this is over etc, but Sam’s been more and more exposed to revenge and seeing the mission through… Even though Dean was handed the gun by John etc it was Sam who ran in and tried to shoot Yellow Eyes (he has a name at last!) - and failed. Dean’s anger in the Pilot was just over Mary and Sam saying how he didn’t feel connected to their crusade and how Mary was gone and could be left to rest so they could have their normal life. So he’s on completely the opposite end now.

* * *

And then Dean is like “I’m barely holding it together” and I’m like ha ha ha stab me. He just wants the family to be back togetheeeeer.

* * *

So of course the last line before the fade to black is demon!Meg (in a new shirt after being shot) saying “You’re never going to see your father again.”

* * *

Welp guess I am watching the next episode right away. :P


	22. 1x22

Or: if there is a time when the truck does not make me jump out of my skin it is not now.

I haven’t even started watching the episode yet and I know it’s going to get me. I KNOW.

* * *

This montage is considerably less inspired and also just the entire of last episode re-told pretty much blow by blow so I should have just kept on watching this one when I accidentally loaded it up first. :P

* * *

It even starts with the same conversation with demon!Meg as last episode ended with.

* * *

Try not to cry over Dean’s “they’ve got Dad” voice wobble.

* * *

“We’re no good to anyone dead.” Dean continues to be kind of sensible, given the circumstances. Well, he’s acting on blind panic anyway. 

Also Sam’s depressing logic about them not offering to trade John.

* * *

“We need help.”

*grins*

Time for our first bit-part character only meant to be in like 1 episode or something who ended up permanently ingrained in the show’s heart.

(I mean, discounting all the times I’ve commented that Cas is like DEFINITELY RIGHT THERE IN THE BACKGROUND IF YOU SQUINT HARD ENOUGH)

(he still is but Bobby actually appears on screen now :P)

* * *

Oh  _no_  I forgot Bobby had a dog. I suppose he never got another one because then we’d just spend the rest of forever worrying about it. *preemptively cries about the dog*

* * *

Did they have a new set for Bobby’s house after this episode? 

* * *

Here’s Bobby warning them about the storm’s comin’ which gets used almost as annoyingly as hunting people saving things this season for season 2′s recaps.

* * *

*cries about the dog*

* * *

Also used over and over is that shot of demon!Meg looking at the demon trap.

I guess they came up with this plan ahead of time so we can’t credit any of them in particular with the idea but I sort of get from the flow of this scene that they didn’t know about devil’s traps at all and then Sam leads Meg into the one in the back room because it flows from him looking in the book and them talking about demon traps for the first time to them getting Meg in one without an apparent break? Probably off-screen Bobby showed it to them and then when Sam asked about it, plopped the book in front of him. I dunno. :P Maybe Sam was protecting Bobby and Bobby did the leading, but then Dean is like “we were counting on it” and so  _he_  knew the trap was there…

Love that “gotcha.”

* * *

Ah, Dean using gendered slurs against demon!Meg. Woooo. :|

* * *

Okay but you know how their early exorcism expelled the demon but didn’t send it back to Hell until you said the next part?

What if you exorcised the demon but didn’t send it back but it was still in the trap?

What if you did it over a really tiny trap?

What if you drew a trap on a jam jar lid and trapped a demon in a jar?

:3

* * *

Okay but Dean threatening to march into Hell. He’s sooo scary in this bit but on the other hand… He sounds so badass. (It was that sort of thing people were hoping for with demon!Dean)

Okay so the fact Dean’s OTT scary anger here is reminding me of the kind of stuff we used to wish for for demon!Dean is probably a thing.

Although he’s concerned for Meg in there once he understands what’s going on.

Still he’s way off the rails here with fear and anger. He’s proved  _right_  with being convinced John isn’t dead, but he scares Sam n Bobby with this attitude. It’s probably the first time we really see him flip like this? He’s been mostly beautifully but quietly troubled, or angry but not like, out of control. I think it’s Dean’s rage that fuels most of this episode, tbh? I can’t remember.

* * *

Poor Meg. :(

Should they really be moving her? I always wince about that. 

You know Dean told Bobby to call 911 and they’re going to find a dead girl, there, s’probably going to be Jody who comes around to ask Bobby what’s up with that. 

:3

*waves furiously to Jody off-screen*

* * *

*watches a member of crew try to shuffle off-screen as well having been caught lurking under a table*

* * *

Just… pretend it was a ghost.

* * *

I suppose Dean is on the same kind of rampage Sam n John have been on all season, except his target is to get John back alive, rather than avenging someone who’s already dead.

* * *

I’m impressed with Jared’s circle-drawing skillz.

* * *

But the back of the Impala is SO DUSTY. Compared to later seasons Dean really is being unfussy with her. I don’t think this necessarily means he isn’t bonded with her yet, just… they’re both a little messy, Dean’s got a lot of things on his mind all the time, and when he rebuilds her from the ground up,  _that_  is when he really puts his soul into Baby in a way it wasn’t before. He was the Guy With The Cool Car before, but… yeah. I think I saw somewhere that Sam doesn’t drive Baby once in season 2? I will keep an eye out for that. He’s driven her multiple times this season - so many I haven’t even commented on all of them unless they came around to be plot important that it was Sam in the driver’s seat.

* * *

Wait is Sam talking about leaving the Colt behind and Dean like we need the kill everything gun. Kinda like the end of season 9 with the First Blade! I was meant to be looking out for season 9 stuff in season 2, but I guess this argument has a lot of different flavours from that even if it kinda looks the same on the surface. 

* * *

Dean’s like, “I don’t care what Dad wants” - he wants to save John to restore the family for HIS end game: Sam n John both went on the suicide mission style motivation last episode, John to buy them time by handing over the fake gun and Sam trying to go back into the exploding house to kill Yellow Eyes… Dean just wants them all to be alive, basically against their current actions, and will do anything, including really ill-advised stuff (like wasting that important bullet). I really like how this is setting Dean up against his own programming: he knows he should obey John and respect his dumb wishes to be captured by demons and probably die all for the sake of preserving the revenge mission. And he will use the gun even when they shouldn’t (as he does later) for the sake of saving their family from death  _even when it isn’t_  the main revenge mission and just some random demon. This is setting up before the case where it happens just how much he’d do for the family because it’s basically pitting him against Sam with Sam on the side of revenge and, weirdly for Sam given all the rebellion, following John’s orders, while Dean is loyal to the  _idea_  of the family and not particularly, right now, the actual mission statement of the family.

“When do you care what Dad wants?” “ _We_  want to kill this demon.” Another thing putting Sam n John in one box - Sam’s emphasis is suggesting like Dean has chosen this other path outside of the family goals. Dean’s desire to actually try and preserve what little family is left, against their self-destructive nature, is just killing me with how it ironically puts him in this outside the family “we”. 

“You’re selfish, you know that? You don’t care about anything but revenge.” (Dean blaming Sam for being like John a line before; I guess therefore accusing John too through Sam.) This definitely echoes their falling out in Scarecrow, where there Dean was accusing him of being selfish for prioritising revenge over saving people, specifically the potential victims of the scarecrow. Now Dean saying he’s going to be the one who has to bury his revenge-obsessed family is putting himself as the victim - and emphasising his own emotional needs out of the family, which is pretty impressive to have Dean admitting anything about what he actually needs.

* * *

Oh so Dean actually puts the Colt in the back of the car and agrees to Sam’s comment that they can’t use it. So this is pretty much exactly how 9x22 went down.

* * *

“So how the hell are we going to get in?”

PRANKS.

Hell House was training for this. :P

* * *

I like that those demons were sitting at the table together, all domestically. Like, just casually playing the part even though no one was watching them.

* * *

\o/ Dean needs to get a Yorkie. I know we always say Sam should get the dog, but have we considered this possibility?

* * *

Uuugh the line about Dean wanting to be a fireman when he grows up. Too soon.

* * *

But why don’t they  _always_  have the holy water in those pumps? I mean seriously. It couldn’t be too hard to steal some more.

Or, like, buy them on the internet tbh.

* * *

I suppose the demons tied up John for the purpose of having him rescued realistically? Unless Yellow Eyes possessed him later? I mean they weren’t exactly on the ball with anti-possession stuff back then.

He’s not actively possessed when they rescue him anyway, since they splash holy water on him.

I can’t work out how much the demons they shoved in the closet were in on it or not. I suppose Yellow Eyes came along later? The demons are still trying to stop them so if Yellow Eyes didn’t possess him until later as retaliation to this that makes sense. I mean they weren’t warded to not be  _found_  either.

* * *

Heh, Sam is worrying about getting followed too.

We still don’t really know how demons find people, do we?

* * *

“You saved my life back there.” “So I guess you’re glad I brought the gun.” I wonder if a vague memory of this went through Dean’s mind in 9x22: he gets validated here for bringing the OP weapon, and even using it to save Sam’s life - the most important thing to him - and it’s tied in to this conversation about killing a person for the first time. Dean knows he racked up collateral damage to save Sam, and it scares him but at the same time he was pretty much unable to do anything else. He had a means to save Sam and Sam was going to die, and so Dean did the thing probably with very little thought about if he should or not upfront. I suppose this is the equivalent of Faith for Sam, where he saves Dean and causes  _his_  first collateral damage, but as a side-effect beyond his control: a mistake he only discovered after he had already done the thing. Dean’s first codependency collateral damage was upfront. I just find it interesting that these two season 1 moments mirror things that happen in season 9 and 10 but dark, horrible extremes.

* * *

*waves at Azazel when he wanders in to affirm Dean for killing that demon* It’s all sorts of wrong that he’s reassuring him for killing a guy. And that’s apparently not the exact part of it that Dean takes offence to.

* * *

Or him telling Dean how he watches out for the family. Ugh. :P 

* * *

Azazel sends Sam away to ask for the gun. Hm… Doesn’t want him getting caught in the crossfire? Even though Sam is kinda important to Azazel much of this confrontation is about Azazel, John and Dean, with Sam’s plot-relevance the main issue on his side.

* * *

Azazel asking Sam to trust him, trying to get him on his side in the fight, while wearing John’s face. Hmm.

* * *

But Sam shuffles over to join Dean because he’s learned to trust him rather a lot more lately. :P Good Sam.

* * *

Aw man the Yellow Eyes reveal.

Oh, he says holy water doesn’t work on him? I think it works on pretty much  _all_  other demons? Maybe they just forgot about this one as well. They were making a lot of exceptions for powerful demons early on, and later they either forgot the exceptions or applied them to all the demons evar.

* * *

You know I don’t think demon!Meg is ever really angry enough about Dean killing Azazel? Like I know they kind of forget he was her dad after this season anyway… She at least was very loyal to him and her later characterisation is about lacking order and finding something new to serve and blah blah there’s an Azazel shaped HOLE but they never actually talk about this?

Maybe it’s another weird canon thing where once they realised demons were human souls it was kind of weird for her to be a direct descendant. I’ve seen headcanons she was daughter in the sense that he kind of mentored her more than biologically spawned her, so perhaps we’ll just go with that for the sake of not shaking up the lore too much. :P

* * *

Booo Azazel telling Dean that his family doesn’t need him as much as he needs them. Ugh Dean needing people. Deeean. (edited to add: the early argument in this episode where Dean called Sam selfish was also focussed around Dean NEEDING his family, with the emphasis on the rest of the family trying to throw themselves away. Dean’s goals for the family vs the need for revenge again. He has an emotional need for them that outweighs everything.)

* * *

Also Azazel says “clearly John’s favourite” rather than “I’m in John’s head and confirm he’s the fave.” I actually think (unlike Bobby :P) John genuinely did not have faves, even if he loved them both differently. He was just catastrophically bad at expressing that in two different ways; Dean spent more time with John than Sam and I’m sure Sam feels like Dean not fighting with John the same way and how he always acted as the “good” son instead of the rebellious one meant John would like Dean more… He was scared John wouldn’t even want to see him (and in the very early episodes Dean emphasised how he had spent more time with John and so on and so forth to Sam to show he was the “better” son (probably from his own insecurities)). Meanwhile Dean was busy doing everything he could to stay in line and fearing that he was never good enough for John (see: Something Wicked) and with all the childhood trauma of raising Sam, felt like he was the favoured child. SO Azazel here is really just confirming Dean’s fears, maybe not  _actually_  talking John’s mind?

Yes I am defending John again, but against  _Azazel_  who is still kind of much higher on the asshole scale. :P

* * *

Aaaaah, I forgot about John overpowering Azazel momentarily. So Swan Song was a reference back to this I guess? Especially with them both tearing into Dean. (And Bobby too at the start of season 5 to remind us that you can do this - everyone gets a turn!)

Dean is really good at breaking mind control and possession on other people. :P

* * *

And then Sam gets put in the exact opposite situation: in full control and being faced with having to kill a family member of free will. It’s the pinnacle of their whole revenge thing (and Dean was saying how much Sam was like John - and John is begging Sam to kill him and pick revenge over family) with Dean urging him not to… And Sam picks family over revenge. Good for you, Sammy. That was like the whole season…

 

FUCK the truck got me again. *jumps like 100 feet in the air.*

I told you. EVERY TIME >:|

* * *

Happy end of season 1! Everyone is dead!

(It’s not a very compelling argument to renew the show. :P)


End file.
